Manolo Badrena - The One Thing

Manolo Badrena - The One Thing (1979)

A monster funky cosmic latin jazz rock jam of the most uncommon variety. 

The One Thing is a remarkable psychedelic space-funk odyssey.

Party time people!

Lenny White – The Venusian Summer Suite

Lenny White – The Venusian Summer Suite (1975)

A jazz-rock-fusion bomb. Opening with the epic four and a half minute space-y horror movie synth goodness then it's a funky cosmic voodoo trip worthy of 70s Miles, which makes plenty sense as Lenny White's drummage featured on Bitches Brew. Superfly bass and flute with insane synth guitar breaks follow.

Lenny White - Mating Drive (1975)

The children of Bitches Brew supply more tasty cyber-superfly fusion. This time it gets brutal, intense and dark. 

Peak jazz rock fusion for existential urban night driving with the possibility of violence.

Mating Drive is nearly fifty years old and yet it still sounds like the future to me. Imagine if overrated tosh like The Smile was fifty years ahead of its time instead of over fifty years behind it?

Santana - Carnaval/Let The Children Play/Jugando

Santana - Carnaval/Let The Children Play/Jugando (1977) 

Haven't I been a fool? Why hasn't this been in my life before now? I vaguely recall hearing this fifteen or twenty years ago and thinking I must investigate that further. And I just didn't and yet I've got all sorts of latin and jazz and cumbia and samba rock and boogaloo and fusion and chicano rock albums and compilations. I mean I love nothing better than a latin rhythm so this was a no brainer but for some reason...well I guess I was always led to believe Santana were not only daggy but terrible and I never had a Santana fanatic friend to seriously sit me down and tell me the score. I'm hoping there is more like this mental medley in the catalogue. 

Rewind!

Miles Davis/James Brown

Miles Davis - So What (1959)

Somebody asked me the other day who are the five greatest music artists ever. I could only come up with one which was Miles.  

James Brown - Cold Sweat (1967)

Then the next day when the question came back to me in my head the only other one I could say for certain was James Brown.

Cold Sweat really is a funky-fied version of So What innit. Does everyone know this?

Anyway I think the story goes that they were jammin' on So What and it morphed into what would become known as Cold Sweat, inventing funk in the process. Whether that's the exact moment funk was born I dunno but if I had a DeLorean with a flux capacitor and could attend just one jam session from the twentieth century that would probably be it.

Charles Mingus - The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady

Charles Mingus - Mode D-Trio and Group Dancers/Mode E- Single solos and Group Dance/ModeF-Group and Solo Dance (1963) 

I don't have a Marantz semi-audiophile set up like I did twenty seven years ago so a lot of the nice jazzy jazz (cool, hard-bop and post bop) I've been listening to just isn't cutting it, particularly the bass. I need to get a real hi-fi again! Something raucous with grunt like Charlie Mingus on The Saint And The Sinner Lady (1963) is much better because it's unapologetically in your face in the most delicious way. God it even sounds alright on me computer. I forgot that this LP is genius. 

I remember seeing a Charles Mingus documentary at the film festival around maybe 1999 or 2000 but I recall almost nothing about him or his music. All I recollect was that he was a part Chinese, part Swedish and part African American and he was pretty grumpy. So all I really know is the barmy music I had on a handful of tapes of his classic late 50s and 60s albums. However I don't think I ever knew that this record was like his Bitches Brew ie. his engineer Bob Simpson, under the direction of Charlie, was using the studio as an instrument and pioneering splicing in jazz six years before that Miles Davis/Teo Macero watershed moment. Apparently more than fifty edits were used. This involved cutting and sectioning the magnetic tape with razor blades and putting it back together with sticky tape and somehow making it sound seamless.

  

Charles Mingus - Track C Group Dances (1963)

As mentioned in a previous post Charlie hated the term jazz as did a lot of his fellow musicians. The record company decided to market this LP as "ethnic folk dance music", it's definitely my favourite ethnic folk dance album. The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady contains the spirit of ye olde New Orleans with the most infectious serpentine bluesy jazz infused with touches of Spanish guitar, improv, folk, classical and musique concrète. The whole commotion is like a defiant convulsion. It's an ecstatic blast of clashing tones teetering on the edge of chaos and collapse. A dazzling noise with a gloriously disorienting atmosphere only comparable to My Bloody Valentine.  

Charles Mingus - Track B Duete Solo Dances (1963)

Roll up. Roll up! Every track's a winner! For premium performance of your best interpretive jazz ballet. You too can be a star!

Charles Mingus - Track A Solo Dancer (1963)

Amongst The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady's euphoric cacophony there is a turbulent undercurrent. A sort of the harrowing beauty.

Search For The New Land - Lee Morgan

Lee Morgan - Search For A New Land (1964/66)

A surprising amount of Lee Morgan albums from the 60s were shelved. This seems absolutely absurd to me particularly when they feature the big jazz stars of the day Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Hank Mobley, McCoy Tyner, Cedar Walton and Art Blakey amongst others. Even more absurd was that there were beautifully recorded Wayne Shorter compositions just languishing in the Blue Note vaults. Miles Davis couldn't get enough Wayne Shorter tunes at the time. Shorter tracks like E.S.P. and Nefertiti were being used as titles for Miles Davis records for God's sake. 

Anyway unlike other Lee Morgan albums Tom Cat and Infinity, they didn't wait until the 80s to release this recording. 1964's Search For A New Land only gathered dust on the shelves until 1966. Despite being recorded two months after the smash crossover hit LP The Sidewinder, Blue Note immediately shelved this record and requested Morgan go back into the studio to create another boogaloo jam in an attempt to capture the mass market again. 

The title track written by Lee Morgan is a spectacular piece of kaleidoscopic spatial jazz featuring Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and unusually for Morgan guitarist, Grant Green, along with the ace rhythm section of Reggie Workman and Billy Higgins doing divine cymbal work. It's all about wide open spaces and ebbs and flows and rare tones and unfamiliar vibrations and new horizons and tense tranquility and mysterious euphoria. 

Not so much the jazzy jazz as the post-bop transforming into spiritual jazz and free-bop. Make no mistake this is peak visionary jazz.

Masqualero - Miles Davis

Masqualero - Miles Davis (1967)

The four (pre-electric) second quintet records E.S.P., Miles Smiles, Sorcerer and Nefertiti have been severely underrated by the CardrossManiac. Thirty years ago they were deemed only of interest as precursors to Miles in electric mode, not bad albums but still pretty dusty and fusty. I did not realise they were full blown artistic achievements worthy of prestigious status all of their own.   

In a way this is Wayne Shorter's band more than anyone else's but perhaps that's a misnomer as it's also definitely Tony Williams' band and it's also a Miles... Actually it really is a band, not a solo project. Jazz outfits usually always used a stars name though. We all know Can were the ultimate psychic rock band but this quintet reached extreme telepathic levels that are peerless. 

Masqualero starts out with clunks of drums and bass and keys, almost immediately Miles and Shorter begin riffing in unison, trumpet and sax going in and out of phase for a minute. Then the next six minutes are a free-bop extravaganza. Miles does his thing for a bit as do the other sans Shorter. Then Miles drops out as Shorter enters adding some of the most beautiful sounding saxophone textures and lines he ever recorded. While wonderful lowdown lulls and whirlpools of exquisite moody space are created by Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams. With a minute to go Miles and Shorter come back, in off kilter unison, before a final flourish from the other three. 

While Masqualero is composed by Wayne Shorter you know that's only a blueprint and free playing is the goal. Playing (including listening) that's flexible, improvisational and cosmic yet not formless but not conventional either. Lucky for them responsiveness was collectively instinctual with each member of this quintet. 

Sorcerers indeed!

Descarga loca - Aníbal Velásquez

Aníbal Velásquez - Descarga loca (1965)

A real boogaloo scorcher. Well it's classic Columbian descarga innit. Literally a crazy jam. 

It's easy to see how jazz was waning in public opinion particularly when you hear jazz influenced tracks like this that are so much more immediate, infectious and ultimately more accessible. This is one of the reasons why the electric Miles revolution was necessary.  

The Sidewinder - Lee Morgan

Lee Morgan - The Sidewinder (1963)

The teen trumpet sensation who played on Coltrane's Blue Train and many Art Blakey And The Jazz Messengers peak records including the previous post's Moanin' was a veteran in his mid 20s, making a comeback after a dalliance with the "China white" by the time he recorded this scorcher. A latin inflected hard bop boogaloo bomb!

Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers - Moanin'/Children Of The Night [Steely Dan - Aja]

Moanin' - Art Blakey And The Jazz Messengers (1958)

More jazzy jazz of the ultimate jazzy jazz variety. Trumpet from Lee Morgan! Benny Golson tops on tenor sax. Composition and fa fa funky rhythm and blues jazzy piano from Bobby Timmons. Rhythm section none too shabby either with Jymie Merritt accompanying Blakey's tres jazzy drummage. I mean it is jazzy jazzy but you can't escape the fact that it's got a bluesy rock'n'roll soul too. 

Peak jazzy jazz!

Perhaps hard bop is the archetypal jazzy jazz for me because I don't go back and listen to old school bepop or swing or big band or whatever else is lurking back there. I remember having tapes of Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and other bepoppers when I was small and it just seemed too ancient because I already knew Bitches Brew, Spiritual Unity, Interstellar Space and 60s/70s James Brown. 

Art Blakey And The Jazz Messengers - Children Of The Night (1961)

A Wayne Shorter composition featuring his great sax and the tremendous trombone of Curtis Fuller then the topper-most trumpet of Freddie Hubbard. Terrific tinkling of the ivories from Cedar Walton while Art & Jymie ensure the tempo and swinging dance-ability of the tune. 

These Jazz Messengers sure had a great run from the mid 50s to the mid 60s. They basically ran the jazzy jazz for that ten year period while other jazz sub genres existed adjacently. If you just followed all the members and their solo outings and collaborations along with all the Blakey And The Jazz Messengers records for that period you would be down an impeccable jazz rabbit hole. That's a big chunk of peak history for the jazzy jazz and the subsequent offshoot sub styles of the time. 

...Oh now I remember why I ended up in the jazzy jazz milieu, Steely Dan. Walter Becker and Donny Fagen loved the engineering aesthetics of Rudy Van Gelder. He recorded thousands of sessions in his New Jersey studio for labels such as Prestige, Blue Note and Impulse. The above two tunes are engineered by Van Gelder.

Steely Dan - Aja (1977)

Wayne Shorter made a cameo sax appearance on this, the title track to Steely Dan's Aja from 1977. A sprawling post-bop extravaganza like no other in rock.

This, not so much the jazzy jazz as the jazz fusion/jazz-rock. It's post-rock though really innit. 

Also notable for the exquisite improv drummage from Steve Gadd...

...and THE EVERYTHING!