Playing Favorites: Reflections on Jazz in the 1970s

[Peter Friedman]

58 minutes ago, HutchFan said:

Weekly Recap - PLAYING FAVORITES: Reflections on Jazz in the 1970s 

Mickey Tucker – Mister Mysterious (Muse, 1979)
Jay McShann – Kansas City Hustle (Sackville, 1978)
Pepper Adams – Reflectory (Muse, 1978)
Archie Shepp & Dollar Brand [Abdullah Ibrahim] – Duet (Denon, 1978)
Bennie Wallace – Live at the Public Theater (Enja/Inner City, 1978)
Bob Brookmeyer – Back Again (Sonet/Gazell, 1979)
New York Jazz Quartet – Blues for Sarka (Enja/Inner City, 1978)

 

I love this week's selections.  Every one of them. 

George Mraz is a hero this week, as he appears on no less than three of these albums.  I've said it before: No one makes a more lovely sound on the bass than George Mraz.  His bass sings! 

To anyone reading this post who's never heard Mickey Tucker's Mister Mysterious:  Go to my blog pronto!  I've embedded a YT link, so you can hear the entire LP.  Frank Foster!  Pepper Adams!  Cecil McBee!  Eddie Gladden!  And Mickey Tucker's superb compositions.  ... You can thank me later.   

 

Yes George Mraz is a marvelous bass player. He is certainly one of my very favorites on his instrument.I have seen him live a number of times and he continually impresses me. Not flashy or trying to turn the bass into a guitar. He lays down a solid bass line choosing perfect notes. His solos are highly interesting.

 

Many good ones on this list. If forced to pick my top choice, it would be- Pepper Adams : Reflectory. 

[felser]

17 hours ago, JSngry said:

Mess? 

IMO, YMMV

[JSngry]

Like 'em both, although for totally different reasons. And the latter is not the greatest record ever, if you know what I mean.

[felser]

3 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

Was there some sort of air of mystique then, such that you would have purchased a Blue Note record if you saw it?

Or was the Blue Note of the 60s just seen as a just another label until the reissues got underway in the 80s (noting the fact that Blue Note had a life of its own in the 70s)? 

There was already a mystique here in my world (Philly) by the time I started with jazz in the early 70's.  I knew to grab any 50's/60's Blue Note out of a cutout or cheap used bin, if I knew the artist or not.   I had some good guys in record stores (not just Third Street Jazz, but also Franklin Records in Plymouth Meeting Mall) who trained me well.

[HutchFan]

7 minutes ago, Peter Friedman said:

Yes George Mraz is a marvelous bass player. He is certainly one of my very favorites on his instrument.I have seen him live a number of times and he continually impresses me. Not flashy or trying to turn the bass into a guitar. He lays down a solid bass line choosing perfect notes. His solos are highly interesting.

Agree 100%.  ...  Jimmy Rowles called Mraz "Bounce" because he's a Bad Czech.   

 

7 minutes ago, Peter Friedman said:

If forced to pick my top choice, it would be- Pepper Adams : Reflectory. 

It's a superb record.  

 

Edited October 25, 2020 by HutchFan

[BillF]

6 minutes ago, HutchFan said:

Jimmy Rowles called Mraz "Bounce" because he's a Bad Czech.   

 

 

 

Interesting! The British satirical magazine Private Eye always referred to newspaper proprietor Robert Maxwell as "the Bouncing Czech". Maxwell, of Czech origin, was later revealed to have been raiding his employees' pension fund to prop up his failing business. His daughter Ghislaine isn't making too good a name for herself nowadays, either.

[HutchFan]

2 minutes ago, BillF said:

Interesting! The British satirical magazine Private Eye always referred to newspaper proprietor Robert Maxwell as "the Bouncing Czech". Maxwell, of Czech origin, was later revealed to have been raiding his employees' pension fund to prop up his failing business. His daughter Ghislaine isn't making too good a name for herself nowadays, either.

Yikes. I had no idea. 

I guess the daughter is carrying on a family tradition, eh?  (And not a bad one.  Just a bad one.)

 

[Dan Gould]

I think it would be interesting if, at the end of the year, people went back and just tallied up total number of selected recordings that they also own.

[felser]

3 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

I think it would be interesting if, at the end of the year, people went back and just tallied up total number of selected recordings that they also own.

Agreed, and subtotaling by year may be enlightening also (I'm sure I'll have a lot more from the beginning of the decade).

[HutchFan]

3 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

I think it would be interesting if, at the end of the year, people went back and just tallied up total number of selected recordings that they also own.

Hmm...  Not sure what that would tell us -- except for the degree to which other folks' preferences happen to overlap with mine.   

At the end of the year, I'm looking forward to having some discussion about what I should've included -- from other forum members' point of view.  

 

7 minutes ago, felser said:

Agreed, and subtotaling by year may be enlightening also (I'm sure I'll have a lot more from the beginning of the decade).

I've got those numbers in a spreadsheet, along with all albums, leaders, sidemen, recording dates, etc. 

Will be happy to share the file with everyone come January 1, 2021. 

 

[Dan Gould]

Just now, HutchFan said:

Hmm...  Not sure what that would tell us -- except for the degree to which other folks' preferences happen to overlap with mine.   

At the end of the year, I'm looking forward to having some discussion about what I should've included -- from other forum members' point of view.  

 

As to the first statement - yes, exactly. Your choices are yours alone but I'd be willing to wade thru and deliver a raw #. It establishes commonality of interests/enjoyment and also tell us who has extensive 70s holdings and who doesn't.  I know that much - perhaps not all, but quite a bit - of the ones that I own are 70s recordings that don't fall into a "70s" vibe but could have been recorded earlier, like Black & Blue label recordings.

Mr. Felser, on the other hand .... would make a different accounting.

 

 

[JSngry]

4 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

I think it would be interesting if, at the end of the year, people went back and just tallied up total number of selected recordings that they also own.

I'm finding that I'm more front-loaded to the first part of the decade as presented here. Tally Ho!

[HutchFan]

1 minute ago, Dan Gould said:

As to the first statement - yes, exactly. Your choices are yours alone but I'd be willing to wade thru and deliver a raw #. It establishes commonality of interests/enjoyment and also tell us who has extensive 70s holdings and who doesn't.  I know that much - perhaps not all, but quite a bit - of the ones that I own are 70s recordings that don't fall into a "70s" vibe but could have been recorded earlier, like Black & Blue label recordings.

Mr. Felser, on the other hand .... would make a different accounting.

Ah, I gotcha. That makes sense.

I'm just grateful that this forum exists.  Building the blog is gratifying.  But knowing that we can kick around ideas each week -- the talk that happens -- is what has kept me going.   

[JSngry]

George Mraz....by that time, I was a Fred Hopkins guy. Mraz...rubber-bandy, probably not all his fault, just saying, I like that DEEP bass.

[HutchFan]

2 minutes ago, JSngry said:

George Mraz....by that time, I was a Fred Hopkins guy. Mraz...rubber-bandy, probably not all his fault, just saying, I like that DEEP bass.

Different depths and colors is O.K. by me.

Fred Hopkins. Yes.

Sam Jones. Yes.

George Mraz. Yes.

Cecil McBee. Yes.

Buster Williams. Yes.

Red Mitchell. Yes.

... thinking about a bassist whose 70s sound really doesn't appeal to me that much...  Ron Carter?  (... Is that heresy? )

 

[JSngry]

No, not at all.

But time has allowed/beaten me into submission about separating the playing and the sound from the way it was recorded, and for that you can certainly blame both Creed Taylor and Rudy van Gelder. For "production" it was wonderful, at times magnificent, but for "regular music"...YIKES! and it seemed like it got to the point where no matter what the record was, whoever recorded it went with the production sound. Some unfortunate outcomes, there...

 

[HutchFan]

12 minutes ago, JSngry said:

No, not at all.

But time has allowed/beaten me into submission about separating the playing and the sound from the way it was recorded, and for that you can certainly blame both Creed Taylor and Rudy van Gelder. For "production" it was wonderful, at times magnificent, but for "regular music"...YIKES! and it seemed like it got to the point where no matter what the record was, whoever recorded it went with the production sound. Some unfortunate outcomes, there...

Yep. 

RC can sound stiff.  Sometimes that's exactly what the music needs.  Other times, not so much.

For me, Buster is at the other end of this particular spectrum.  Buster is NEVER stiff.  He's always limber.  And I don't mean rubber-bandy limber.  I'm talking flexible like a dancer's body.  I think that's why he's such a bad-ass with those Mwandishi ostinatos.   

 

[Guy Berger]

On 10/25/2020 at 9:05 PM, felser said:

And truth be told, some of those Blythe Columbia's were a mess (though others were pretty great, and the first one was classic).

Agreed on the 1st one being a classic, but the next 4 are not far behind.  An impressive body of work!!!

[felser]

1 hour ago, Guy Berger said:

Agreed on the 1st one being a classic, but the next 4 are not far behind.  An impressive body of work!!!

Count me in for "Illusions" and "Elaborations" along with the first one.

[Dan Gould]

I decided to jump the gun and start a running list of what, to date, I already own (or in some cases, know I owned at one time but ultimately sold).

We must be right about 300 albums to date? I got 37.

I do notice at least two Xanadus that I should go find and a couple of others too ... that would be another way for an "accounting" of your project: How many/which records were people motivated to take note and plan to search out because they didn't know about them or haven't pulled the trigger before?

[Peter Friedman]

I became curious as to how many I have from HutchFans 1970's list. I came up with a total of

70

I have 62 of the 70 on CD. The other 8 I had on LP at one time. I sold almost all my LPs over many years and replaced most of  them with CDs.

Edited October 26, 2020 by Peter Friedman

[felser]

139 for me, almost all on CD.  But of course, my collection is heavily weighted to the 50's, 60's, and 70's.  Do this for the last 40 years, or for the 20's-40's, and my #'s would be much less.

Edited October 27, 2020 by felser

[Dan Gould]

On 10/27/2020 at 11:01 PM, felser said:

139 for me, almost all on CD.  But of course, my collection is heavily weighted to the 50's, 60's, and 70's.  

Almost 4X as many as me, and not far from 1/2 of Hutch's albums to date.

Sounds about right. 

[felser]

19 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

Almost 4X as many as me, and not far from 1/2 of Hutch's albums to date.

Sounds about right. 

And I probably have about 20 total from 1920-1945!  

[Niko]

On 26-10-2020 at 7:05 PM, Dan Gould said:

I decided to jump the gun and start a running list of what, to date, I already own (or in some cases, know I owned at one time but ultimately sold).

We must be right about 300 albums to date? I got 37.

I do notice at least two Xanadus that I should go find and a couple of others too ... that would be another way for an "accounting" of your project: How many/which records were people motivated to take note and plan to search out because they didn't know about them or haven't pulled the trigger before?

just did the counting as well - I got 36...