A recording from the concert for Jim Halls Jazzpar Prize 1998. Jim Hall was the winner of the 1998 Jazzpar Prize, given annually by the Danish Jazz Center. The prize projected ended in 2005 due to loss of sponsorship.
Erling Kroner (tb, arr) – Pernille Bévort (ts, ss) – Kurt Larsen (acc) – Quique Sinesi (g) – Dino Saluzzi (bandoneon) – Jesper Bodilsen (b) – Henrik Simonsen (d).
Paul Murphy flogged this to Chris Bangs who would drop the cut “Unknown Tongue” from the LP Musics in his DJ sets back in the early 80s which is where I first heard it.What a tune!!! Kicking off with the high pitched Middle Eastern whine of Dewey on musette which is joined after a few minutes with the bowed bass of Mark Helias….then comes the marching snare and percussion of Eddie Moore and the bow is dumped for a bass line worthy of Cecil McBee while the musette keens on….until the whine drops down and out while the bass/percussion remain then Dewey begins speaking in tongues…shouting and gabbling away like a man possessed but that rhythm keeps it all storming ahead…then back in with the musette to a fade…Bomb! Can you imagine the impact this had on a crowd of southern soul boys all waiting to hit the floor to Lonnie Liston Smith and Donald Byrd? Well funnily enough it did fuck all to ‘em which either goes to show that most people were either totally off their heads or didn’t listen to the music anyway.I of course belonged in the former crew as it helped deaden the boredom of hearing “Expansions” for the umpteenth time that week.And given some of the utter shite that got played in those days you were probably better off not listening to it anyway. And yes,before you ask, that is a version of Gilbert O’Sullivan’s nauseating vomit fest “Alone Again” lurking on side 1 – but trust Dewey to give it a good overhall in a mutant bossa stylee. [Blog source]
Dewey Redman (tenor saxophone, oboe musette, vocals, harp) Fred Simmons (piano, cowbell) Mark Helias (bass) Eddie Moore (drums, saw, percussion, vocals)
Fantasy Studios, Berkeley, CA, October 17-19, 1978
Need To Be
(The) Virgin Strike (March)
Alone Again (Naturally)
Unknown Tongue
One Beautiful Day
Daystar Nightlight
** also issued on Original Jazz Classics OJCCD 1860-2.
Israel Crosby (January 19, 1919 – August 11, 1962) was an African-American jazz double-bassist born in Chicago, Illinois, best known as member of the Ahmad Jamal trio from 1957 to 1962. A close contemporary of Jimmy Blanton, Crosby is less considered as a pioneer, but his interactive playing in Jamal’s trio and that of George Shearing shows how easily and fluently he displayed a modern approach to jazz double bass. He is credited with taking the first recorded bass solo on his 1935 recording of ‘Blues for Israel’ with drummer Gene Krupa (Prestige PR 7644) when he was only 16. He died of a heart attack two months after joining the Shearing Quintet.
[via Thomas Morgan]
From the album Frankly: A Tribute to Sinatra. Per Goldschmidt (bs) Tom Harrell (tp) Niels Lan Doky (pf) Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen (b) Alvin Queen (ds). Recorded at Easy Sound, Copenhagen, Dec 4, 1993. Released in 1994 on Milestone Records.
[Dedicated to Per Goldschmidt with a happy 70 year birthday!!]
It’s somewhat amazing that this bold, bizarrely eclectic CD by three guys from Minneapolis would come out on a French label. All three players on this CD are renowned session musicians who have played with everybody from Miles Davis to Billy Joel, but News From the Jungle is anything but the slick production you might expect from a trio of session men. The album starts out with a heavy, menacing sound portrait of a bad night in a bad neighborhood, with Sonny Thompson grimly reciting crime statistics over a pounding beat, wailing guitar, and a collage of police calls and urban sound effects. [Source]
[In memory of Jef Lee Johnson - via Jamaaladeen Tacuma]
