Most Overrated 50's-60's Blue Notes

[Rooster_Ties]

It's all about the "expectations" game -- not unlike Presidential Primary races.

For instance, a REALLY strong showing in a state where a candidate is not expected to do that well, may in fact turn out to be a "victory" even with a second place "win" (even if the candidate in second place only gets 35% of the vote).

Whereas a candidate expected to run away with it may in fact "loose" the race in a particular state by only winning plurality of the vote (say 45%), to a second place finisher who got 35% -- when the actual "winner" was expected to get 50% or say 55%.

It's all about expectations. (Sorry about politics creeping into a non-political forum, but I think the example is a good one.)

For me, a player is overrated if a good bit of the music he or she makes isn't as good as my expectations are going into it. Underrated, just the opposite -- when a bunch of the music is better than my expectations are. And my expectations are largely based on "conventional wisdom", for lack of a better term -- based on discussions here, and elsewhere.

Edited December 4, 2006 by Rooster_Ties

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

Donald Byrd is the most accomplished artist ever to record for blue note and should be given the Nobel prize, for excelling in hard bop, and funk

[Rooster_Ties]

in hard bop, maybe.

and funk?? - you've got to be kidding.

[Eric]

I happen to love Freddie Hubbard's BN dates (well, except for the live one). I think they are more interesting artistic statements than most of the stuff that Morgan or Mobley put out.

Donald Byrd made quite a few good records on BN ... personally he doesn't do much for me as a trumpeter.

[Jim R]

For me, a player is overrated if a good bit of the music he or she makes isn't as good as my expectations are going into it. Underrated, just the opposite -- when a bunch of the music is better than my expectations are. And my expectations are largely based on "conventional wisdom", for lack of a better term -- based on discussions here, and elsewhere.

Well, I think the term "overrated" tends to imply that there's a body of people who are doing the "overrating", and the individual expressing the opinion is reacting against that. If each one of us wants to have our own definition (and yours doesn't work for me) of "overrated", then this discussion is even more pointless than I already thought it was.

And don't worry, because I'm not even sure if I understand what I just said.

[michel1969]

I don't know to what extend this or this particular title is overrated...Everyone has his list (Mobley's Dippin', for exmple is one of my all tme favourite Jazz LP's) Anyway, i think that there are many recordings from artists that are regarded with more interest BECAUSE they are on Blue Note. The opposite, is : some fantastic jazz record are underrated, BECAUSE they are on labels that are less estimated than Blue Note.

For example : Don Sleet "All members" and René Thomas "Guitar Groove" are extraordinary hard bop sessions, IMO, but they do not have the attention they deserve, BECAUSE they are ONLY on Jazzland. Of course this does not mean noboby pays attention on them. But compare their price on the collector market with Blue Note from the same era and you'll see what i mean. Their is no particular hysteria on R. Thomas or Don Sleet.

[JSngry]

Y'all are crackin' me up...

What we have in the BN catalog of the 50s & 60s is a body of product turned historical documentation. As product, much of it was conceived and presented for what even then was a niche market. As historical documentation, it remains that. Somebody like Tina Brooks isn't "important" because they made grand statements that posed a new direction for the music. They're important because they had a little sumphin-sumphin different, a little flavor of their own that was very much of their time yet just every so slightly different. How much one both empathises with the original scene and the little something different will determine the value they place on somebody like Brooks.

Andrew Hill? Well, whatever you want to think. But I'll ask this - whether or not he floats your personal boat, did/has anybody else made music like this?

Mobley? See Brooks, only exponentially so.

Blue Train? - get real - that was by far and away Trane's most fully/completely realized album until he went to Atlantic. Some historical perspective is called for.

Hubbard? See Hill, only with fewer exponents. The guy was simply one of the most fluid and fiery trumpeters who's ever played. The uses to which that fluidity and fire was put can be debated, but not the thing itself. That alone matters, but I myself think that the "overrating of Freddie Hubbard" is in itself overrated. The motherfucker could flat out play, and did so a lot more times than people seem to want to begrudge him.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

Only a few items in the BN catalogue qualify as "general classics". The rest is for "connoisseurs". Not in the elitist sense, but simply in the sense that most of it is documentation of a relatively few scenes, of a relative handful of people (most of them top-shelf musicians) doing what they did, and sometimes changing along the way. If you "get it", it's gold, and if you don't, you wonder what the fuss is about. But it's a lot hipper to just fess up that the various evolvinghardbop/takingtheinsideoutroute/souljazz/whatever segments of the label's output just don't hold more than at best general interest for you personally. Because if it does hold more than at best general interest to you, you have a reason for caring about the minutiae. And if it doesn't, you don't. Simple as that.

This whole "overrated" crap more often than not is just really another way of saying "I don't get it, so it can't be all that". Fuck that.

[sal]

I think this thread might have gotten a bit off track from overrated Blue Note albums as it has ventured into overrated artists, which is something completely different. With this in mind, I can understand some of your comments, JSngry. However, getting back to the topic, I don't think there's anything wrong with stating that certain albums may be overrated. Particulary with Blue Note, which has such a legendary following in the jazz world, and this in turn can easily cause one to think something is automatically great just because it came out on Blue Note in the late 50s - early 60s.

For example, most of us can agree that Freddie Hubbard is a hell of a player. But because he's a hell of a player, does that make his sessions as a leader exceptional? I find the majority of his sessions as a leader to be a bit dry compared to alot of other stuff that was coming out at the same time. I'd like to think that I "get" Freddie's playing, but that doesn't mean that his albums as a leader are great albums because they came out on Blue Note and because Freddie's a great player. I think that's what the original aim of this thread was, as I'm sure most of us very much like the artists that came out with stuff on Blue Note during this era.

Agreed that its a difficult/controversial topic to address, but its spawned some great discussion!

[clifford_thornton]

Good points.

I guess it's true that how much of this music is really the greatest thing since sliced bread? I still love sandwiches, though. Eat a lot of them, and not just for convenience. I like a good sandwich, and of course even better a great sandwich.

[JSngry]

Well yeah. But otoh, this "overrated" business seems to be more aimed at deflating the mythology (which I'm all in favor of, btw) than it does at understanding what the mythology is all about in the first place (which I'm even more in favor of).

A lot of Blue Note fandom has its roots in uncritical acceptance of any/everything put out during the Lion/Wolff era. I mean, there's no way that Dippin' & Reach Out are the same "quality" record, if you know what I mean. But you got your "faithful fans" who will swoon over both equally just because it's Hank Mobley, and just because it's on Blue Note. Later for that shit.

But...

There's also a level of appreciation for the label as a whole that is quite legitimate, I think. There's no question in my mind that the aforementioned "quality control" aspect of the label paid off handsomely. Even on a record that I find to be pretty much a dud overall for me, like, say Byrd's Mustang has its moments of truth and beauty. That's not something that can be said about too many other labels (although Impulse! would probably be one about which it could. But that was a label that operated from a different premise than did Blue Note).

Taken as a whole, the BN catalog is remarkably consistent. And what they did in providing ongoing documentation of a whole set of players (some of whom would not likely be documented as thoroughly, if at all, elsewhere) in differing (and not so differing) contexts cannot be objectively denied. So between consistency and documentation, there's definitely legitimate grounds for respect and admiration. When you come at it like that, then yeah, I think you can certainly be discriminating between albums. You should be, in fact. But to simply dismiss a unique document like Fuschia Swing Song misses the point - it's exactly the uniqueness -in every way - of that document that makes it special.

Now, if this whole aspect of uniqueness, documentation, etc. doesn't float your boat, fine. I understand that. I personally couldn't give a rat's ass about, for example, the 70s Prog-Rock that gets a lot of dicks hard on this board. But since I simply just don't dig what it's all about in the first place, I'm not going to use the few odd things therein that I do like as a benchmark to claim that everything else is "overrated". I don't have the enthusiasm for the music as a whole to make that distinction honestly, and I don't have the depth of understanding as to what particular albums really represent to the overall perspective of that type music to do that. I'll just shut up. And snicker.

And Prog-Rock is just a random example. Within the realm of "jazz" itself, there's more than enough subsets of genres and scenes to make Blue Note just another one of them. The devout fans should recognize that, but so should the not-so devout. Otherwise, everybody says some really stupid shit along the way. And that has happened in this thread.

Now as for Hubbard, yeah, most of his BN leader dates are to me "lesser" than his sideman dates. That's a puzzle to me, actually. Always has been, especially since he made such a strong showing as a leader on CTI (say what you will about the music itself, there's no denying that Freddie very much presented a "strong leader face" on those dates, especially the earlier ones). But few of the BN leader dates are "bad" as much as they are just....not as distincitve as they could/should have been. And again, that's a mystery to me. But yet again, there's things on those records that need to be heard if that era and those players are of more than just passing interest to you, and although I understand the "overrated" tag in this instance, I think that it's too easy to slide from "overrated" into "easily dismissed", and I'm nowhere near ready to do that, not in the context of understanding this era and these players. Because there is "relevant information" to be found, and not just a little bit of it either. Quite the contrary. But you have to want to find it, and not everybody wants to do the work. Not saying that they should, mind you, just saying that it's there if you want it. And that holds true of a lot of "lesser" BNs, and of a lot of "lesser" records in general. The information is there.

Besides, I'll go to my grave digging the shit out of Ready For Freddie. Would that they had all hit that vibe!

[Jim R]

I don't think there's anything wrong with stating that certain albums may be overrated. Particulary with Blue Note, which has such a legendary following in the jazz world, and this in turn can easily cause one to think something is automatically great just because it came out on Blue Note in the late 50s - early 60s.

For example, most of us can agree that Freddie Hubbard is a hell of a player. But because he's a hell of a player, does that make his sessions as a leader exceptional? I find the majority of his sessions as a leader to be a bit dry compared to alot of other stuff that was coming out at the same time. I'd like to think that I "get" Freddie's playing, but that doesn't mean that his albums as a leader are great albums because they came out on Blue Note and because Freddie's a great player.

As I said before, I think some of the logic/assumptions here are the basis for some of the disagreements and confusion. Who ever said that all of Freddie Hubbard's BN's were exceptional? Who said that everything on BN is "automatically great"? Even if someone did, that counts as one opinion. If two people said it, that's two opinions... so what am I missing here? Maybe I'm just not exposing myself to the same sources of hyperbole as some of you. There are a lot of BN's that I don't own, and that's based on how I have reacted to the artists and styles on other recordings. I've never gone around telling people that everything on BN is essential or great, and I don't know anybody who has. I think we can agree and feel confident in saying that BN was a great label, but that doesn't mean we all think that all of it belongs on all of our shelves.

[sjarrell]

Y'know, Hub Cap's not bad, Breaking Point I rarely pull out, (Night of the Cookers I NEVER pull out) but the rest of Hubbard's BN output is super-swell.

But to me, Sketches of Spain is overrated jazz, so what the hell do I know? I know that Open Sesame, Ready for Freddie & Blue Spirits kick Miles' ass in my little world.

Edit: Not only could Hubbard play better than most trumpeters, he could write circles around most other composers.

Edited December 5, 2006 by sjarrell

[Face of the Bass]

My main problem with the deification of the Blue Note catalog during this time period is that the label was basically churning out a lot of albums, admittedly, of high quality, that sounded just like each other. Similar lineups, similar tunes, similar musical approaches. They broke out of this mold somewhat in the mid-60s with some of the albums by McLean, Shorter, Hancock, Dolphy, and Hill, but the great weakness of BN for me is that, at the end of the day, most of their stuff sounds the same, or at least, very similar.

i understand what you're saying, but can't the same be said of riverside, prestige, et al? most labels during the time frame being discussed had a stable of players that comprised their dates which resulted in certain consistencies... the sides from some labels are simply more diverse than others due to variety in material and groupings. i don't see it as a blue note thing, although they certainly had their sound.

?,

-e-

Well, yes, but compare Blue Note to Impulse. Which had the more diverse sound? For me it's Impulse, hand's down.

[Face of the Bass]

Also, I would agree that Andrew Hill is currently overrated. My reasons for this belief are that his music gets touted on every jazz message board, his albums from the 1960s have been getting reissued at an almost insane pace, and yet I'm almost always disappointed by the results. And it's not because I'm too "conservative." If anything, I read people talking about Hill as this incredible musical innovator and then I get excited until I listen to the product and find that it doesn't measure up to the hype. If anything, Hill wasn't radical enough. To equate him to Monk or Mingus is insane.

Also, FWIW, I always get the feeling that Hill's compositions were more akin to some incredibly dry science experiment than any genuine artistic statement. You read the liner notes to his albums and it's all about how he wanted to write a tune with x number of bars in different scales or whatever. Yawn. My opinion is that the guy just didn't have that much to say. His best albums are good because of the playing of the other people, not because of his allegedly "out" playing, which actually sounds quite tame when put next to the best innovators on the piano from the time period. I listen to Monk and I hear humor and sadness. I listen to Cecil Taylor and I hear incredible energy and propulsive drive. I listen to Hill and I hear a guy searching for an identity and never quite getting there.

[JSngry]

Impulse! was not built around the concept of "rotating house bands" either. They mostly brought in "known quantities" as leaders, and, other than Trane, didn't do the whole "artist development" thing like Blue Note did, at least until they got into the "New Thing". And even then, the focus was almost entirely on the leader. How many Impulse! sidemen (again, out of the Trane orb) came out of "nowhere" and were so impressive to Taylor/Thiele that they got Impulse! contracts/dates a result? Hell, Shepp had to almost gangster Trane to get Theile to give him a date. And whatever Shepp did for Marion Brown, the net result was what? One album. If Lion had've been behind those cats (and if they had come along when he was more energetic about growing the label), there would've been a series of sideman & leader dates. The talent would have been nurtured to one dgree or another. That was Lion's way, at least in his prime. With Impulse!, Thiele was, apart from Coltrane-related items, a record-maker first and foremost.

Not a problem, but it does point out a difference in conceptual/working methodology between the labels. which in turn points out a difference in what their respective outputs "represent".

[felser]

If you "get it", it's gold, and if you don't, you wonder what the fuss is about. But it's a lot hipper to just fess up that the various evolvinghardbop/takingtheinsideoutroute/souljazz/whatever segments of the label's output just don't hold more than at best general interest for you personally. Because if it does hold more than at best general interest to you, you have a reason for caring about the minutiae. And if it doesn't, you don't. Simple as that.

This whole "overrated" crap more often than not is just really another way of saying "I don't get it, so it can't be all that". Fuck that.

Jim, that can be true if an entire artist is being dismissed, (good point made later about artists vs. albums being discounted) but is a dangerous general assumption even then. I agree that I need to dismiss myself from judging good hip-hop from bad hip-hop, etc. because I can't "hear" any of it. But when I dig 'Spring' and am left cold by 'Lifetime', when I love 'The Gigolo' but feel lukewarm towards 'Cornbread', when I am crazy about 'Complete Communion' but can barely listen to 'Symphony for Improvisors', when I will take 'Ready for Freddie' to the grave but never feel any urge to play 'Hub-Tones' or 'Night of the Cookers' something different is going on there other than 'I don't get it simple as that'. There has to be aesthetic involved even within a sub-genre.

Edited December 5, 2006 by felser

[JSngry]

If you "get it", it's gold, and if you don't, you wonder what the fuss is about. But it's a lot hipper to just fess up that the various evolvinghardbop/takingtheinsideoutroute/souljazz/whatever segments of the label's output just don't hold more than at best general interest for you personally. Because if it does hold more than at best general interest to you, you have a reason for caring about the minutiae. And if it doesn't, you don't. Simple as that.

This whole "overrated" crap more often than not is just really another way of saying "I don't get it, so it can't be all that". Fuck that.

Jim, that can be true if an entire artist is being dismissed, (good point made later about artists vs. albums being discounted) but is a dangerous general assumption even then. I agree that I need to dismiss myself from judging good hip-hop from bad hip-hop, etc. because I can't "hear" any of it. But when I dig 'Spring' and am left cold by 'Lifetime', when I love 'The Gigolo' but feel lukewarm towards 'Cornbread', when I am crazy about 'Complete Communion' but can barely listen to 'Symphony for Improvisors', when I will take 'Ready for Freddie' to the grave but never feel any urge to play 'Hub-Tones' or 'Night of the Cookers' something different is going on there other than 'I don't get it simple as that'. There has to be aesthetic involved even within a sub-genre.

Not a problem. You obviously are judging "from within", with a multi-informed perspective, as are others in this thread. But there's been some really dumb, one-dimensional shit said by others. And I ain't naming names!

However, for the sake of argument, I think that The Gigolo & Cornbread are fully equal, both among Lee's best, that Spring & Lifetime are apples and oranges, that Symphony For Improvisors suffers from inadequate recording, and that I'm with you on the Hubbards.

[Face of the Bass]

Impulse! was not built around the concept of "rotating house bands" either. They mostly brought in "known quantities" as leaders, and, other than Trane, didn't do the whole "artist development" thing like Blue Note did, at least until they got into the "New Thing". And even then, the focus was almost entirely on the leader. How many Impulse! sidemen (again, out of the Trane orb) came out of "nowhere" and were so impressive to Taylor/Thiele that they got Impulse! contracts/dates a result? Hell, Shepp had to almost gangster Trane to get Theile to give him a date. And whatever Shepp did for Marion Brown, the net result was what? One album. If Lion had've been behind those cats (and if they had come along when he was more energetic about growing the label), there would've been a series of sideman & leader dates. The talent would have been nurtured to one dgree or another. That was Lion's way, at least in his prime. With Impulse!, Thiele was, apart from Coltrane-related items, a record-maker first and foremost.

Not a problem, but it does point out a difference in conceptual/working methodology between the labels. which in turn points out a difference in what their respective outputs "represent".

I understand all that, I just think that album for album, the Impulse catalog beats the Blue Note catalog in terms of diversity of sound and quality of product. I love Blue Note. I like the Blue Note sound, but I can't deny that it gets extremely repetitive. When you think about Impulse, with all the New Thing guys, Mingus, Tyner, Oliver Nelson, J.J. Johnson, Freddie Hubbard, and others, I just think the overall quality is higher and that the product has less of a sameness to it that sometimes plagues the Blue Notes from the same period.

[etherbored]

fwiw, i am so with you on impulse!

then again, it could be said that the impulse! oeuvre represents a completely different frame of music history than blue note. therefore, one would expect a more diverse catalog from a more diverse time.

on the other hand, the diversity at impulse! began to expand just as it seemingly began to contract at blue note, not so concindentally concurrent with alfred lion and francis wolff selling to liberty in 1965.

-e-

[ep1str0phy]

As much as I enjoy the 60's and 70's Impulse catalog, I question whether it's really the place to look for any sort of "deep" representation of the various scenes it (quite haphazardly) recorded. It's diversity is, in effect, it's failing point; as a label of "broad" interests, it risks coming across as a sort of facile gloss on the idioms it champions (jack of all trades...). There's a sort of presumptuousness about the The New Wave of Jazz is on Impulse! thing--especially in that, barring Trane, Shepp, Pharoah, and a scarce few others (and to a much lesser extent), a lot of the most invigorating "New" music of the era was being recorded elsewhere (ESP springs to mind). I won't begrudge Blue Note any sort of "sameness" in that it not only had an identifiable label sound, but also a deep, thoroughgoing understanding of at least a couple "sub-idioms" of the day (the Messengers hard-bop thing, the Miles clique).

[John L]

What do you all think about Unit Structures? It is often cited as one of Cecil Taylor's absolute masterpieces, and often recommended as the first Cecil Taylor album to buy. It is one of my least favorite 60s-70s Cecil Taylor albums.

Out to Lunch is certainly a masterpiece, although I have never been a huge fan of it relative to other Dolphy.

[brownie]

One major difference between BN and Impulse is that one was run by a couple of people with a passion for jazz, the other by people who were running a music business venture (ABC-Paramount) and tried their luck with jazz.

Nothing wrong with that. Impulse had people like Creed Taylor and Bob Thiele to make sure the products made an impact.

[ep1str0phy]

I think it's a great album, but again the BN juju often positions it on the "masterpiece" end of the spectrum versus a lot of his other works (and we should mention Conquistador, too, because that's perhaps the most digestable and well-liked "post-standards" Taylor will ever get). I'm not sure it's any more valuable than Nefertiti, Air Above Mountains, the New World Stuff, or some of the FMPs toward understanding Cecil's bag (which is a fluid thing, really).

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

OBVISOULY ROOSTER TIES UJUST DONT GET IT. thats ok. u can still live a decent, good life and enjoy jazz. but Donald Byrd is easily one of the top FIVE most impotant jazz musicans of the latter half of Century 20, or the 20th Century. people always priase miles for changing so much in jazz and stuff but miles was a lost cause he didnt know what he realy wanted: changing up his shit so much and so often. but DB excelled in the idium of hard bop from the early 50s through the late 60s. DB is cool cause not only did he excel at this hard bop, but he embraced the '70s and started wearin leisure suits n shit, and made some of the best funk records ever. the late period blue notes espically, Places n Spaces I've Been and Steppin into Tmw, were each at least 5 yrs ahead of their times. DB WAS DOING FUNK IN 1974 THE LIKES OF WHICH WOULD NOT BEEN SEEN AGAIN IN FUNK MUSIC TILL ROUGHLY AT LEAST SEVEN YRS. LATER, EG. 1981. but thats completely besides the point. remember when i called lou donaldson. well i want to talk to DB more than any jazz musican alive. he is the supreme embodiment of great black culture and all the great things about jazz. I spit upon the NEA awards and the Nobel Peace Prize committie until they both recocknoize DB on the Nat'l and then Int'l levels

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

And there's one other thing about Donald Byrd, which isn't said, or isn't said enough.

When he found out that he wasn't getting royalties for his hit album, "A new perspective", because he'd signed a cash contract with BN, he didn't bitch; he moved to Verve, and started studying law. Then he started giving other musicians advice.

Now THAT'S the work of a fucking hero!

MG