Recordings of Baltimore’s Left Bank Jazz Society

[gvopedz]

From the mid-1960s into the early '80s, nearly every Sunday from 5 p.m. onward, the Famous Ballroom was reserved for concerts put on by Baltimore's Left Bank Jazz Society. These were major shows. They brought in Duke Ellington and John Coltrane…

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/21/1171374217/unearthing-legendary-baltimore-jazz-performances

 

 

[Dan Gould]

Thanks for posting this ... I am devoutly hoping that we will hear that there are other Left Bank tapes coming for November RSD or a year from now.  I've listened to the Bishop Jr disc 1 and enjoyed quite a bit.

[felser]

34 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

Thanks for posting this ... I am devoutly hoping that we will hear that there are other Left Bank tapes coming for November RSD or a year from now.  I've listened to the Bishop Jr disc 1 and enjoyed quite a bit.

How's the sound quality?  That is my main concern with Left Bank material.

[Dan Gould]

44 minutes ago, felser said:

How's the sound quality?  That is my main concern with Left Bank material.

I listened in the car and have had A/C issues of late, so windows were open for cross-breeze.

That being said I felt like the sound quality was good with all instruments present and accounted for.

I plan to listen to CD2 in the car on my next drive tomorrow night, which is almost to Tampa so plenty of time for another 55 minutes or so, and then bring it into the office/listening room for next listen. Though the problem there is that work often interferes with listening.

[Hardbopjazz]

I hope that this one will get released at some point. It’s a part of the Sonny Rollins collection That he donated to a Schomburg Center for Research in Black culture.  
 

451897 LBJS Presents The Sonny Rollins Quartet ######## Sonny Rollins; Albert Dailey; Walter Booker; Louis Hayes - "location, famous, rec. eng., V. Welsh (LBJS) Sound recording digitized 

[bertrand]

2 hours ago, Hardbopjazz said:

I hope that this one will get released at some point. It’s a part of the Sonny Rollins collection That he donated to a Schomburg Center for Research in Black culture.  
 

 

451897 LBJS Presents The Sonny Rollins Quartet ######## Sonny Rollins; Albert Dailey; Walter Booker; Louis Hayes - "location, famous, rec. eng., V. Welsh (LBJS) Sound recording digitized 

Bad news - the tape at Schomburg was written over...

[Dan Gould]

7 hours ago, bertrand said:

Bad news - the tape at Schomburg was written over...

You are saying the tape received had been written over, and that was what got digitized?

[Hardbopjazz]

Yes. I went to listen to it. What is on the tape now is Sonny watching an episode of a television Western show.  

[JSngry]

Which show? 

[Dan Gould]

2 hours ago, Hardbopjazz said:

Yes. I went to listen to it. What is on the tape now is Sonny watching an episode of a television Western show.  

Sonny is recorded on cassette, watching an episode of a TV show?  That sounds absurd but on the other hand, since the tape was apparently given him, it seems easy to conclude that he didn't care for the performance and therefore the cassette could be used again .... for audio of him watching TV. My head hurts.

[Hardbopjazz]

14 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

Sonny is recorded on cassette, watching an episode of a TV show?  That sounds absurd but on the other hand, since the tape was apparently given him, it seems easy to conclude that he didn't care for the performance and therefore the cassette could be used again .... for audio of him watching TV. My head hurts.

Yeah. I feel the same. 

46 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Which show? 

I don’t know the show. The tv is on and you hear Sonny speak a few words.  He must have been watching tv and decided to tape the audio?  But Sonny was always a critic about his playing and just erased it. 

[kh1958]

Sun Ra

Lights on a Satellite: Live at the Left Bank 1978

Resonance Records

LPx2

$56.99

Limited to 1500 copies

RESONANCE RECORDS PRESENTS PREVIOUSLY UNHEARD SUN RA DATE LIGHTS ON A SATELLITE: LIVE AT THE LEFT BANK AS LIMITED 2-LP SET FOR RSD BLACK FRIDAY ON NOV. 29
Collection of Thrilling 1978 Performances in Baltimore by Prophetic Bandleader’s Arkestra Also Arrives on Dec. 6 as Two-CD Set
 
Deluxe Package Includes Additional Tracks Recorded by Filmmaker Robert Mugge, Notes by Critic J.D. Considine and Archivist/Band Member Michael D. Anderson, Interviews with Arkestra Icon Marshall Allen, Musicians Gary Bartz and Craig Taborn, and More
Sun Ra _ LeftBank CD
Resonance Records proudly presents Lights on a Satellite: Live at the Left Bank, a blazing set of previously unissued 1978 concert recordings by Sun Ra and his Myth Science Cosmo Swing Arkestra, as a limited two-LP set for RSD Black Friday, November 29.
Co-produced by Zev Feldman and Sun Ra archivist Michael D. Anderson (who also played drums on the ’78 concert), the newly unearthed live session is an exciting successor to Sun Ra at the Showcase: Live in Chicago, another archival find that Feldman issued on his Jazz Detective imprint for Record Store Day this April.
The new collection will also be released as a two-CD set on December 6.
Prophetic avant gardist Sun Ra’s big band is heard in blistering form — playing repertoire ranging from space age jazz to interpretations of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and jazz standards by Fletcher Henderson, Miles Davis, and Tadd Dameron — on a dynamic 12-track set recorded at a show mounted by the Left Bank Jazz Society at the Famous Ballroom in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 23, 1978. Those recordings are augmented by two tracks captured at the concert and featured in the classic 1980 film Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise by the acclaimed music filmmaker Robert Mugge, who also provided images for the new package.
The deluxe Resonance packages include an essay by noted jazz critic J.D. Considine (who attended the ’78 show); reminiscences from Anderson, Mugge, Left Bank member John Fowler, critic Dan Morgenstern, and Arkestra veteran and latter-day bandleader Marshall Allen; and thoughts on Sun Ra’s artistry from musicians Gary Bartz and Craig Taborn.
Sun Ra. Photo by Alan Nahigan.
Sun Ra. Photo by Alan Nahigan.
Feldman says of this newest discovery, “It was very exciting to learn from Sun Ra archivist Michael D. Anderson that these recordings from the Left Bank in 1978 even existed. Filmmaker Robert Mugge was also very kind to us by allowing us to borrow the music he had recorded for his film, which is presented here as bonus tracks. Also thanks to Mr. Mugge, we’ve included various high-resolution screen captures from his film that help capture the energy of what it was like to be there at the Famous Ballroom that night.”
Sun Ra. Photo by Alan Nahigan.
Anderson recalls, “When we played in the Famous Ballroom, it was incredible, being able to be in such a big place….Especially [with] the [Arkestra] dancers. They were one part of the band that a lot of people miss because the dancers are just like instruments, but you have to see it. That’s why when Mugge did this film — he was able to show the beauty of how they danced to the music.”
Mugge — whose shoot at the Left Bank show was his maiden voyage as a music documentarian — remembers, “[It] went surprisingly well, our only unresolved question being, could we successfully record a large ensemble without multitrack recording equipment, or even the cables we needed to patch into the mixing board of Vernon L. Welsh’s house PA system? But sound man Bruce Litecky improvised, coming up with usable audio by pointing one mike at the house PA speakers and another at whichever musician or vocalist was currently taking the lead.”
Considine notes in his overview that the music at the ’78 concert reached both veteran Sun Ra fans and new, younger listeners: “For the older, regular attendees, there was much of what they had gotten before. Sun Ra’s arrangement of the Tadd Dameron chestnut, ‘Lady Bird,’ was a condensed history of mid-century jazz….And for the younger, rock-raised newbies, there was the sonic splatter of Sun Ra’s synthesizer against Dale Williams’s probing electric guitar in the aptly titled ‘Thunder of Drums.’ There were African rhythms mixed with avant-garde improvisation, slapped electric bass driving classic swing cadences, and unabashed sentiment cheek-by-jowl against transcendental consciousness.”
The Left Bank’s Fowler remembers, “Sun Ra was a completely unique experience. And it was just a fun day. I mean, this was when he had all of the singers and the drummers and the dancers. There had to be 30 guys in the group. It was a real theatrical experience and a musical experience. Sun Ra was like nobody else.”
Weighing Sun Ra’s impact on jazz, saxophonist Bartz says, “Sunny confirmed that we need to be free as musicians. You can’t get hung up into a genre or a style. If you study music, you study sounds and if you do, like any other study, are you just going to study one kind of a sound? Or are you going to study sounds, period. I don’t study one kind of a music. I study music. I got that from Sunny.”
Pianist Taborn adds, “So many people revere him now. His approach was so comprehensive to the Black music experience as a whole. He delivered a commentary on so much of what had happened before and what was going to be happening that it applies itself across time. That’s why I think his music has so much traction now 30 years after he passed.”
Saxophonist and flautist Allen, who marked 66 years as a member of the Arkestra on his 100th birthday on May 25, reflects on Sun Ra’s trailblazing methods as a bandleader: “When Sunny was playing, he’d play four bars, and if you didn’t have the music, he’d switch it, he’d play another song, so you had to remember all this music. And then, when he played four bars, I’d come in. If I didn’t, he’d switch the number, and by the time you found that number, he’d be in another one. Above all, you had to be sincere to do what he wanted you to do.”