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| Jazz Express Presents Romantic Moods - Tender Tunes for Loving Afternoons |
VÁLOGATÁS
Art Blakey, Charlie 'Bird' Parker, Clare Teal, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Donald Byrd, Hank Jones, Jamie Cullum, Kenny Burrell, Larry Coryell, Red Garland, Sarah Vaughan, Stacey Kent, Stan Getz, Woody Shaw |
első megjelenés éve: 2008
71 perc |
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CD |
Kérjen
árajánlatot! |
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Jazz
Welcome back to Jazz Express. There's nowhere else to be when you need the sounds to suit the mood. This time round we've lit the candles, chilled the wine and turned the old place into a cuddle-up cavern with Romantic Moods, a sumptuous collection of jazzy classics played and sung by masters of the art. Those who love and those who hope to love will feel particularly at home but actually, anyone needing a little warmth and mellowness in their life will love it here.
"Imagination is crazy," goes the lyric of our first track, "Your whole perception gets hazy." Anyone who's ever been smitten knows exactly what the lyric is talking about. We don't get Johnny Burke's words here, but we do get the lovely Jimmy Van Heusen melody and a whole bunch of beautiful blowing from warm-toned trumpeter Woody Shaw with further tasty contributions from trombonist Steve Turre and pianist Kirk Lightsey.
With topical references to the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Franklin Roosevelt and Greta Garbo, Ira Gershwin's original 1936 text for "I Can't Get Started" has been subject to many variations over the years. In Billie Holiday's version Garbo's invitation to tea came from ‘Gable' then ‘Basie', in Rod Stewart's recent version it was from Tina Turner! In 2002, twenty-something singer-pianist Jamie Cullum doesn't get invited to tea by anyone and the reference to Metro-Goldwyn becomes ‘all the movies'. However, he still gets presented at court and, puzzlingly, in 1929 he remembers selling ‘short'. Whatever, he performs Vernon Duke's music with great poise.
"My One And Only Love" has about as many different sets of chord changes as I Can't Get Started" has different lyrics, but the one guitarist Kenny Burrell settles for here will do just fine. Kenny once stated, "I strive for honesty in playing what I feel." Judging from this gorgeously understated trio performance, he must have been in a particularly tender mood.
However tender Charlie Parker may have been feeling, there was always a restless musical rigor to even his most laid-back of performances, as witnessed by the skittish double-time runs through the harmonies of "Don't Blame Me". It's left to the muted trumpet of Miles Davis in his eight-bar cameo toward the end to cool things down to a placid finale.
Singer Stacey Kent has no qualms about getting placid, not to say sensual, with George and Ira Gershwin's perennial "They Can't Take That Away From Me". Introduced by Fred Astaire in the 1937 movie Shall We Dance, it's usually taken at a medium swing tempo. Here Ms Kent positively smoulders her way through a lightly grooving ballad reading, pausing midway to dust off the rarely performed verse.
Like his erstwhile compatriot in bebop Charlie Parker, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie was not one to get overly sentimental on a ballad. While the tone of his performance of Dietz and Schwartz's "Alone Together" is a degree or two calmer than his usual approach, it's thrilling to hear Dizzy's brilliant, fiery imagination straining at the leash.
Guitarist Larry Coryell has made his reputation as a fusion pioneer but his delightful solo reading of Duke Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady" here shows his ongoing affinity with the classic tradition. His employment of an electronic effect creating a distinctive ‘shimmer' to his guitar sound midway through his performance is his sonic signature, but the substance of his interpretation is consistently and startlingly musical.
It's an eighteen-year-old Stan Getz who blows his tenor horn on "And The Angels Swing". With his lazily swinging lines over a functional minor chord sequence, the youngster is clearly still in thrall to his saxophone hero Lester Young, but in his occasional boppish flurries, there are hints of his prowess to come.
"Ruby My Dear" is a ballad usually given a slightly edgy, ‘ugly beauty' approach by its composer Thelonious Monk. Here, pianist Hank Jones shows his freshness and skill as a Monk interpreter, delivering an elegant, gently rhapsodic version which manages to be true to Monk's tart harmonies while also teasing out the inherent romanticism of the piece.
With her respectful, swinging approach to the Great American Songbook, contemporary British singer Clare Teal has been hailed by some commentators as the natural successor to Ella Fitzgerald. Here, she also brings a touch of theatricality to her reading of Kurt Weill's "Speak Low", which underlines her expertise in the cabaret field.
Drummer Art Blakey is best known for leading over many years a series of explosive hard-bop groups known as the Jazz Messengers. This 1957 incarnation of the Messengers features trumpeter Bill Hardman and altoist Jackie McLean on a rare pretty moment, "Mirage", written by pianist Mal Waldron.
Red Garland was so well regarded by Miles Davis when he was the pianist in the trumpeter's classic 1950s quintet, he would often get a piano feature to himself. Sometimes it was the swinging "Billy Boy", other times it was a ballad. Here he takes a customarily dignified, orchestral approach to "The Second Time Around" a Cahn/Van Heusen song introduced by Bing Crosby in the 1960 movie High Time.
"Lover Man" is a frankly sensual song of desire that was written in the early 1940s by pianist ‘Ram' Ramirez and sung by a gay Billie Holiday imitator called Willie Dukes before Billie herself made it her own. Here we have the young and already brilliant Sarah Vaughan in her 1945 version, backed by no less than the kings of modern jazz, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.
A modern jazz virtuoso of the next generation, trumpeter Donald Byrd was a hard bop star in the 1960s, then a fusion star in the 1970s, then he stopped playing for a while. From his comeback period in the late 1980s, Byrd is in a temperate, almost fragile frame of mind on his own plaintive ballad composition "That's All There Is To Love". The mighty tenorist Joe Henderson is on hand to lend gentle support.
As a soothing curtain-closer, we've got the Count Basie Orchestra playing Neil Hefti's soft-shoe swinger "Lil' Darlin'". Count himself had vacated the piano chair for the big ballroom in the sky by the time this delicious recording was made in 1986, but the band was full of Basie alumni, including the venerable Freddie Green in the guitar chair, a position he'd held since 1937.
That's all this time round. But I hate to spoil a party, so if you don't want to break it up just yet, why don't you give Romantic Moods another spin and I'll see you later. Pop round again, why don't you? Jazz Express is always open and you're always welcome.
Chris Ingham plays jazz piano and writes about popular music. He contributes to Mojo and is author of Rough Guide To The Beatles and the forthcoming Rough Guide To Frank Sinatra. |
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