Best track you heard all week

[John L]

"Johnny G.G." from the Johnny Griffin Sextet on Riverside. Kenny Drew sets down the blue mood exquisitely with Wilbur Ware and Philly Joe. Then Griff comes in for the kill, gradually picking up the intensity in his extended solo and then bends some blue grit high notes over the horn riffs. Mmmmmm, good!

[BillF]

Jazz: Roy and Diz throwing off the mutes halfway thru "Blue Moon" as the Oscar Peterson Trio fans the flames from underneath as the old lions sail off into the stratosphere!!!

Yes, that's a great moment!

[Matthew]

Billie Holiday: Fine and Mellow. I just love this version....

[Sundog]

A young Ravi Shankar on The Original Uday Shankar Company- Raga Tilanga- Indian Musica: Ragas & Dances. Absolutely mind-expanding. And he was only 17!

[Dan Gould]

Little Milton with Delbert McClinton, "Some Kind of Wonderful". Here's a piece:

http://www.divshare.com/download/10984976-4fe

[JohnS]

Brad Mehlday Trio; Anything Goes. Warner Bros

[Neal Pomea]

Prohibition Blues, The Missourians

[WorldB3]

Pumpkin Pie - Organissimo

[Sundog]

James Brown- Honk Tonk (Parts 1 & 2)

[B. Goren.]

Great version of "Cry Me A River" on this album:

[Brad]

Tadd's Delight from Lovano's 52nd Street Themes.

[BillF]

Tadd's Delight from Lovano's 52nd Street Themes.

[Son-of-a-Weizen]

John Hicks 'Mind Wine'

[ghost of miles]

The Purple Chick mix of the Beach Boys' "Wind Chimes" from the original SMILE sessions:

Wind Chimes

Beats hell out of the SMILEY SMILE version IMO. Haven't heard Brian Wilson's 2004 version yet, though.

[JSngry]

I keep hearing people preferring this version to the one on Smiley Smile, but...not me. For my money, the SS version is one of the most...envelope-pushing works of an era where envelop-pushing was more than a little common. A lot of Smiley Smile has an air of "giving up" to it, but this one is actually more elaborate/considered/fleshed-out/whatever than its predecessor in terms of both performance and production.

And if you've not yet heard the fully-realized Smile...GET YOUR ASS IN GEAR. BUDDY!!!

Seriously - everybody and their Dutch Uncle has their own "mix" of the original Smile (Google around for Beach Boys blogs and you'll see what I mean...), but the bottom line for me is this - these "mixes" are all from the same source materials, and those source materials are unfinished as far as fitting together go. That's why on this version of "Wind Chimes" it suddenly breaks off into that variant of the "Heroes & Villains" motif and never comes back (and that happens on a LOT of the Smile raw material..., which is why I prefer the SS version of the tune - they make an entire piece out of it instead of leaving it as a beautiful piece of a puzzle that never gets put together..).

All of which is to say - the 2004 Smile is nothing but a triumph. It works, it works, it WORKS! The original....doesn't. Not ultimately. Give fullest props to Van Dyke, the Wondermints, and everybody else involved as well as to Brian, but this is essential music for anybody American Art-Pop aficionado. It's a glorious piece of work!

[Dan Gould]

Powerful piano & bass on "Smack Dab in the Middle" and its not Gene Harris and Ray Brown.

http://www.divshare.com/download/11101605-3da

[ghost of miles]

I definitely plan on checking out the 2004 SMILE. Re: the late-1960s "Wind Chimes" tracks, to me the SMILEY SMILE version sounds like Brian's gone on a bad ludes trip. And while yeah, there's definitely artistic merit and even a weird kind of honesty perhaps at work there, I still dig the luminous spell of the earlier version much more. It's genuinely beautiful--and that's so rare that I find myself going back to it, brief as it is.

Track grabbing me right now: Artie Shaw, "Fred's Delight" (Tadd Dameron tune).

[colinmce]

Monk w/ Johnny Griffin - "Rhythm-a-Ning" at the Five Spot.

The only other Griff/Monk I'd heard up to this point was the Blakey album. This was a revelation.

[JohnS]

"Autumn in New York" by Clifford Brown All Stars. Emarcy

[save0904]

"Tickle Bath" Dave Liebman Group on Conversations

[jeffcrom]

The two new-to-me tracks that got all over me this week were:

"When the Levee Breaks" by Bonerama, from the Hard Times EP. It's nine minutes long and goes through lots of changes of direction and mood.

The slow "lining hymn" (I don't know the name, and it's not listed as a separate track) that follows Dr. Bob Wilson's 1969 sermon "The Crisis of Identity" on an ACR LP. It's strange, eerie, and goosebump-inducing.

[Peter Friedman]

Estate - Rich Perry Quartet

From his recent cd "Gone" on Steeplechase.

[Matthew]

Heard this about a week ago, and now I can't get it out of my stupid head.

Elvis Presley: Rubberneckin' Paul Oakenfold Re-mix.

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=pC7-NzEK9xY

Edited May 16, 2010 by Matthew

[paul secor]

Hank Williams: "A House of Gold" from Just Me and My Guitar

[kinuta]

Chocolate Pork Chop Man - Pete ' Guitar' Lewis