Tag Archives: Jazz

Ray Charles: Rare Genius – The Undiscovered Masters

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Spruced-up set of Ray Charles vault finds

Of course, this should really be titled “The Previously Undiscovered Masters” since they’ve obviously been discovered at this point, but that quibble aside, this is an impressive set of ten tracks that were, for one reason or another, left in the can. Waxed in the 70s, 80s and 90s at Charles’ RPM International Studios, some of the tracks emerged from the vault completely finished, and some were fleshed out with matching contemporary arrangements. There’s soul, blues and jazz, as one would expect from a Ray Charles album, but there are a few examples of his affinity for country, as well. A cover of Hank Cochran’s “A Little Bitty Tear” is sung as gospel blues, and the album’s biggest surprise is a finished duet with Johnny Cash covering Kris Kristofferson’s “Why Me, Lord?” The latter, produced by the legendary Billy Sherrill in 1981, has Cash singing lead in his resonant baritone while Charles provides soulful electric piano and backing vocals. Charles sounds terrific on all ten tracks, elevating the players (both then and now) with his soulfulness. Producer John Burk (who helmed Charles’ last album, Genius Loves Company) has done a magical job of melding the vintage productions with the new work, creating an album that’s a  great deal more cohesive than you’d expect from a set that began its life as disparate vault recordings. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

Various Artists: Black Sabbath- The Secret Musical History of Black-Jewish Relations

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African-American performers sing Jewish songs

It’s not exactly a surprise that American musical history is filled with the combined efforts of African-American performers and Jewish songwriters. But this fifteen track collection shows that these collaborations often intertwined the two communities’ stories and struggles. Drawing together material across several decades, one hears tin pan alley, Jewish theater, and the borscht belt. Cab Calloway mixes Yiddish into his scat singing on “Utt-Da-Zy,” and the blues of “Baby Baby” prove a natural fit for Libby Holman and Josh White. The arrangements range from spare folk to fully-orchestrated productions like Eartha Kitt’s “Sholem,” the funky soul of Marlena Shaw’s “Where Can I Go” and the strut of Aretha Franklin’s “Swanee.” The set’s highlight is a nearly ten-minute live medley by the Temptations in which they work through the songs of Fiddler on the Roof (check here for video!). [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Eilen Jewell: Butcher Holler- A Tribute to Loretta Lynn

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Cool tribute to Loretta Lynn

On last year’s Sea of Tears [review], Eilen Jewell stepped up from folk and country sounds to electric twang. She dropped the fiddle and harmonica of her earlier releases and sang solo with a rockabilly-styled trio of guitar, bass and drums. That same trio format, with the thoroughly stellar Jerry Miller on guitar and pedal steel, is employed for this terrific salute to Loretta Lynn. The band plays blue and lightly rocking across a dozen covers, melding Jewell’s jazz-tipped vocals with twang-heavy guitars and tempos that turn the ballads into sorrowful two-steppers and the rest into perfectly restrained rockers. You can hear Lynn in every track, but what you won’t hear is Jewell copying the subject of her tribute.

Jewell isn’t as feisty a singer as Lynn, which keeps “Fist City” and “You Ain’t Woman Enough (To Take My Man)” from delivering the originals’ heat. To be fair, Lynn wrote and sang these songs when such outspokenness, at least from a female country singer, delivered a shock and element of liberation that’s not available to a contemporary vocalist. Jewell’s cool approach works perfectly on the sly “You Wanna Give Me a Lift” as she brushes off an overly amorous suitor with the lyric “I’m a little bit warm, but that don’t mean I’m on fire.” For “Don’t Come Home A- Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind),” Jewell offers a promise of forgiveness in place of a half-cocked frying pan, and it works very nicely.

Lynn’s originals are filtered through Jewell’s influences, so while these new recordings pay homage to the hits, they’re distinct interpretations influenced by the blue emotions of Patsy Cline, Billie Holiday, Connie Francis, and the torchy styles of Big Sandy and Julie London.  Jewell sings most everything solo, doubling herself on the superbly forlorn “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl” and leaving Miller’s guitar to provide the second voice elsewhere. Miller’s steel playing on “A Man I Hardly Know” is superb, and the bouncy “You’re Looking at Country” closes the album on a convincing note: Jewell’s a bit jazz, a bit blues, a bit rockabilly and a whole lot country. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Ray Charles: Genius + Soul = Jazz (Expanded Edition)

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Four-LPs-on-two-CDs reissue of Ray Charles’ jazz sides

Ray Charles’ helped inaugurate the Impulse! label with this 1961 release, the label’s second album. Produced by Creed Taylor, and recorded in the same New Jersey studios that hosted Jimmy Smith and other Blue Note greats, Charles sat himself behind a Hammond B-3 and together with key members of the Count Basie band, he swung arrangements written by Quincy Jones and Ralph Burns. From the opening horn stabs of “From the Heart” it’s clear that this band plays big, brassy and hard, yet Charles keeps it cool on the organ, and his two vocal numbers (“I’ve Got News For You” and “I’m Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town”), are blue and soulful. Charles gave the band and its soloists plenty of room to shine, but when his keys step to the front, such as his growling lead on “One Mint Julep,” it’s clear whose leading the sessions.

Concord’s two-CD reissue adds three albums that Charles recorded in the 1970s: My Kind of Jazz (1970), Jazz Number II (1972) and My Kind of Jazz Part 3 (1975). These are primarily instrumental albums and are filled with the sort of charts used to warm up audiences at Charles’ live shows. There is a generous helping of 3/4 jazz waltzes and Latin rhythms. Recorded with his road band, the lineup is filled with instrumental stars, including Blue Mitchell, Joe Randazzo, Clifford Scott, David “Fathead” Newman and many others. Highlights include the Stax-styled groove of “Booty-Butt” and a bubbly take on Lee Morgan’s “Sidewinder.” As an additional bonus, a cover of “Misty” is included from trombonist Steve Turre’s In the Spur of the Moment.

The recording quality is superb, with a super wide stereo image. Remastering is by Paul Blakemore at Telarc. The set’s 12-page booklet includes new liner notes by Ralph Friedwald, original album notes by Dick Katz and Quincy Jones, and full-panel cover reproductions. The original sessions show Charles at full power; the 1970s albums feature great playing, but often feel like pre-show warmups. If you already have Genius + Soul = Jazz in high fidelity, the upgrade may not be necessary, but if you haven’t yet enjoyed Charles’ 1961 classic, this is a great way to hear it. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Megan Lynch: Songs the Brothers Warner Taught Me

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Vocalist and acoustic duo reanimate jazz-age cartoon classics

Warner Brother’s cartoons – the classics drawn in the 30s, 40s and 50s – connect to modern-day audiences with surprising timelessness. Surprising, because if you look beneath the frenetic humor, you’ll find period details threaded throughout. Nowhere were early twentieth-century totems used more regularly than in the soundtracks. Composer Carl Stalling regularly quoted Tin Pan Alley songs in his background scores with a literality that vexed his animators, and selected songs were sung by the characters. Even then, these classics were typically reduced to a line or two that highlighted an action or emotion, rather than sung all the way through. Most of the songs, as songs, remain a mystery to even ardent Warner Brothers’ fans.

This disc features new performances of a dozen songs sung or played in classic Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes shorts, opening with the memorable “Hello Ma Baby.” Famously sung by Michigan J. Frog in “One Froggy Evening,” Lynch expands on the Jolson-esque chorus quoted in the cartoon with the classic’s ragtime verses. Perhaps even more iconic is “Shuffle Off to Buffalo,” the title of which was often used as shorthand for a quick exit. Here the lyric is revealed as a post-nuptial love song whose expectation of wedding-night bliss is surprisingly scandalous. Other tunes, such as “It’s Magic” and “It Can’t Be Wrong,” were used mostly as mood melodies, so hearing them sung is like being introduced rather than reintroduced.

Lynch is a talented vocalist who uses portamenti and trills to conjure the jazz age. The acoustic accompaniment, including lazy fiddle solos, chipper ukulele and haunting turns on the saw give these songs a chance to unfold, and separated from the frenzy of a cartoon they unfold and flower. Still, when anyone croons “Someone’s Rocking My Dreamboat,” it’s hard not to imagine Bugs Bunny floating idly to a South Pacific island in (the un-PC) “Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips” or carried in a barrel in “Gorilla My Dreams.” Lynch is joined in reanimating these classics by the Tony Marcus (guitar, mandolin, fiddle) and Robert Armstrong (national steel guitar, banjo, accordion, ukulele, saw) of the Cheap Suit Serenaders, with appearances by Steven Strauss (bass, ukulele) and Brandon Essex (bass). [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Various Artists: Radio Hits of the 60s

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Terrific collection of AM radio’s highly varied legacy

Rather than picking an artist or label or scene or sound, Legacy’s pulled together thirteen original hit recordings that show the range of music that AM radio brought to its listeners. Collected here is New Orleans R&B (“Ya Ya,” 1961 and “Working in the Coal Mine,” 1966), Dixieland Jazz (“Washington Square,” 1963), Easy Listening (“A Fool Never Learns,” 1964), Folk Pop and Rock (“We’ll Sing in the Sunshine,” 1964 and “In the Year 2525,” 1969), Garage Punk (“Little Girl,” 1966), Soul (“I’m Your Puppet,” 1966 and “Cherry Hill Park,” 1969), Bubblegum (“Simon Says,” 1968), Trad Jazz Vocal (“The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde,” 1968), and Vocal Pop (“Worst That Could Happen,” 1969).

Even within these individual songs you can often hear more than one genre exerting its influence, such as the steel guitar and horns that provide accents to the superb pop production of Merrilee Rush’s “Angel of the Morning.” In this day of highly balkanized music channels and individually programmed MP3 playlists, it’s hard to imagine such variety inhabiting a single mass-market playlist, but that was part of AM radio’s power to attract and keep a broad swath of listeners. Playing this collection will remind you how good record and radio people were at picking and making hits – the winnowing process disenfranchised many, but what got through the sieves, particularly what got to the top of the charts, was often highly memorable.

Legacy’s disc clocks in at a slim 35 minutes, but what’s here is a terrifically nostalgic spin whose songs stand up to repeated listening forty-plus years later. True, Andy Williams’ “A Fool Never Learns” might wear out its welcome before the other tracks, but it’s part and parcel of the ebb and flow of 1960s AM radio. This set isn’t meant to be an all-inclusive compilation of any one thing in particular, but a reminder of the breadth that once graced individual radio stations across the land. There was a unity to AM radio’s audience that’s been replace by the free choice of the empowered individual. That personalization carries with it many benefits, but the range of this set may remind you of what’s also been lost. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

Jackie Gleason & Bobby Hackett: Essential Cocktail Lounge

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Instrumental mood music for orchestra and trumpet

These set is a budget-priced MP3 version of the 4-CD set Complete Sessions issued on the Fine & Mellow label. It collects 102 tracks recorded by Jackie Gleason and Bobby Hackett between 1952 and 1959, with Gleason conducting an orchestra and Hackett adding his trumpet. The set includes the original albums “Music for Lovers Only” (1952), “Music to Make You Misty” (1953, and not including the tracks featuring saxophonist Toots Mondello), “Music, Martinis and Memories” (1954), “Music to Remember Her” (1954), “Music to Change Her Mind” (1956), “Music for the Love Hours” (1956), and “That Moment” (1959). The last two, which were the final two pairings of these artists are previously unreleased. The last of the albums is also the only one originally released in stereo, though it seems to be reproduced in mono here. Even stranger, most of the tracks from “The Love Hours” seem to be broader than plain mono, but not really stereo. One channel or two, Gleason’s orchestrations are lush, with relaxed tempos and dramatic string arrangements that provide a compelling place for Hackett’s languid playing and smooth tone. The material sticks mostly to standards, and though Hackett has a jazz background, this is very much easy listening music. A hundred-and-two tracks (over five hours of music) may be more than the casual mood music fan can use, but for Gleason fans or anyone looking for hours and hours of pleasant background music, this set is a steal. Note that the track ordering does not follow that of the original albums, and the detailed booklet supplied with Fine & Mellow’s CDs are completely absent. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Ray Charles: Sings for Lovers

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Brother Ray sings the highs and lows of love

Concord’s “For Lovers” series features catalog selections from vocalists and instrumentalists exploring the joys and heartaches of love. Singer-pianist Ray Charles is a natural fit for this series, with his soulful vocal delivery, emotional playing, sophisticated arrangements and broad appetite for material. These sixteen tracks are drawn from his post-Atlantic pop recordings, with nearly half dating back to his first few years on ABC. The rest are drawn from the late-60s through the mid-70s, and skipping over his late-70s return to Atlantic there’s a 1993 cover of Leon Russell’s “A Song for You” and a 2006 re-orchestration of his 1970s cover of the Gershwins’ “How Long Has This Been Going On.”

Producer Nick Phillips mixes iconic hit singles “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” “You Don’t Know Me,” “Ruby,” and “Here We Go Again” with lower charting entries, the seasonal favorite “Baby, It’s Cold Outside (sung in duet with Betty Carter) and intelligently selected album tracks. It’s the latter – the lesser-known picks – that make this collection unique. Highlights include a version of Meredith Wilson’s “Till There Was You” that’s so soulful, it’s hard to match it with Paul McCartney’s sugar sweet rendition on With the Beatles, and his intimate reading of the Gershwin’s “Love is Here to Stay” features a terrific piano solo within Sid Feller’s restrained arrangement.

The broad range of Charles’ musicality is represented in selections from jazz player Don Redman, country artists Don Gibson, Red Steagall, and Eddy Arnold, tin-pan alley scribes Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Mitchell Parish, and George and Ira Gershwin, pop writers Leon Russell, George Harrison, and Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, and theater and film composers Meredith Wilson, Victor Young, Ned Washington and Heinz Roemheld. The latter’s “Ruby,” which riginally appeared in the 1952 film Ruby Gentry, was recorded by Coleman Hawkins and Oscar Peterson, and brought to its greatest prominence with this yearning, hopeful-yet-wary 1961 recording. Across these selections, Charles is variously backed by orchestra and chorus, strings, horns, and piano and organ-led jazz combos.

With more of Charles’ catalog appearing on download services, you might opt to put together your own collection of his love-related songs. But unless you’re deeply familiar with his catalog you’d miss some of the selections Phillips includes here. Charles won a Grammy® for his cover of Leon Russell’s “A Song For You,” but sixteen-years later you might have forgotten how poignant it sounds in Charles experienced, 63-year-old hands, and the album track “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” shows a delicate jazz chemistry between Charles and Betty Carter that’s buried by the annual revival of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” This is finely programmed set that’s a nice spin for those who want to hear a side of Ray Charles beyond the hits. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

Soulhat: Live at the Black Cat Lounge

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Soulhat_LiveAtTheBlackCatLoungeFriendly and energetic 1991 live set from Austin favorites

In this live album’s liner notes, Rob Patterson remarks that a locale – a scene, or in this case a club – can have a large impact on the music created within it. The Black Cat Lounge, a “ramshackle, no frills dive music bar” that lived on Austin’s famed Sixth Street, made its impact both in a lack of pretension and in the owner’s demand that artists fill an entire evening, often up to four hours, with music. The result, as heard in these 1991 live tracks, is a friendly and open vibe to the songs, sets and performances. It’s not languor, but comfort and confidence. Artists didn’t rush on, play a concise forty-five minutes and rush off. They edged into their songs with instrumental introductions that set a lyric’s mood, and they made room for vocal and musical jams that gave dancers time to spin around the floor.

Fans of Soulhat will particularly relish hearing these early live performances, recorded only a year into the band’s history, a year during which they’d been gigging regularly at the Black Cat. Their mix of rock, blues, country, funk, soul and jazz was well formed by this point, and with hours of time to fill, they allowed themselves to “get lost in the music,” stretching a few of these songs past the seven- and eight-minute marks. But with an intimate club audience that needed to be entertained (as opposed to an arena audience that could feel more abstract from the stage), the jams never lose their way; you can hear the musicians conversing with their instruments, but they keep touch with the audience. The close-in dynamic of a club makes these live tracks a good listen at home.

Eleven of these recordings were previously issued on a limited-edition cassette, but it quickly became hard to find. Recorded on a two-track and mixed to what sounds like mono, the sound is crisp and balances the band and their enthusiastic audience. The group proves itself comfortable with country- and funk-inflected rock, funk- and jazz-inflected soul, folk-inflected pop, and more. That’s a lot of inflection, which may have been the root of the group’s inability to sustain a presence on radio or the charts (their biggest single, “Bonecrusher,” peaked at #25). With the Black Cat having burned down in 2002, these live tracks now stand as a striking artifact of the club’s atmosphere and its impact on the artists who played and developed there. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

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Thee Midniters: Thee Complete Midniters- Songs of Love, Rhythm and Psychedelia

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TheeMidniters_Complete1960s East L.A. rock ‘n’ soul giants get their due

Thee Midniters were hands-down the cream of the rock ‘n’ soul scene that sprouted in mid-60s East Los Angeles. Contemporaries like the Premiers and Cannibal & The Headhunters each made indelible marks, but the Midniters’ talent filled four full albums, numerous non-LP singles and ranged across a unique mix of ‘50s doo-wop and R&B, ‘60s rock, soul and jazz. Their chart success was minor (a 1965 version of “Land of a Thousand Dances” that was covered by the Headhunters and then completely overshadowed by Wilson Pickett), but their originals and covers resound to this day with the unfettered release of a Saturday night rave-up and the slow heat of the night’s last dance.

The band’s guitar, organ and horns sat atop propulsive bass lines and potent back beats, and moved easily from the soulful croon of Jerry Butler’s “Giving Up on Love” to a wicked, organ- and guitar-led cover Barrett Strong’s “Money.” The ballads are warm and comforting, and the up-tempo tunes are scorching. The band’s debut album Whittier Blvd., originally released in 1965, is constructed from a dozen covers, the title track being a hotted-up reworking of the Stones “2120 South Michigan Avenue.” The song list is drafted from then-popular regional and national hits by Marvin Gaye, Lenny Welch, Chris Kenner, and Roddie Joy, and spiked with a pair of rock ‘n’ roll classics from Larry Williams (“Slow Down”) and Chuck Berry (“Johnny B. Goode”). Bonus tracks included with the first album are highlighted by a playful cover of Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual” and a shriek-lined live version of “Land of a Thousand Dances.”

The Midniters’ second album, Bring You Love Special Delivery, was released in 1966 and though it continued the rock ‘n’ soul sounds of their debut, it added a psychedelic vibe and included four originals, including the rhythm-heavy rock ‘n’ soul title track. Jimmy Espinosa’s running bass lines and Danny LaMont’s snare grab you by the lapels as the horn section slaps you in the face; if you ever wondered what influenced Jeff Conolly’s (of The Lyres) organ style, check out Ronny Figueroa’s playing. The covers are drawn once again from popular songs of the day by Martha & The Vandellas, the Righteous Brothers, the Young Rascals, Percy Sledge and Deon Jackson. Thee Midniters really proved themselves the epitome of a great covers band, able to evoke the essence of a hit single while stamping the performance with their own unique sound.

The breadth of the band’s influences is readily heard in the contrast between their down-and-dirty cover of Them’s British Invasion classic “Gloria” and a relatively straight take on Frank Sinatra’s then-current easy listening hit “Strangers in the Night.” The band’s originals include the tough rocker “I Found a Peanut” and the soul ballad “Are You Angry.” Bonus tracks expanding the second album include a smoldering cover of Baby Washington’s “It’ll Never Be Over For Me,” a stomping take on Richard Lewis’ “Hey Little Girl” and the searing garage rock instrumental original “Thee Midnight Feeling.”

The group’s third album, Unlimited, was released in 1967 and opens with a rough, Stones-y cover of Solomon Burke’s “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love.” The horns that start “Cheatin’ Woman” suggest a moment of soothing soul, but vocalist Little Willie G is in no mood to forgive and forget as he croons his goodbye to an unfaithful mate. Originals finally dominate the song list with a variety of torchy ballads, garage rockers, easy swinging soul, and summery pop. The instrumental “Chile Con Soul” finds the band branching into jazz, and “Welcome Home Darling” is a fine upbeat blues-rocker. The set list winds down for a cover of the Beatles’ “Yesterday” and heats back up for Mitch Ryder’s medley of “Devil With a Blue Dress” and “Good Golly, Miss Molly.” Eight bonus tracks include the wild mariachi-rock “The Big Ranch,” a superb mid-tempo soul original, “You’re Gonna Make Me Cry,” plenty of heavy, psych-tinged blues, and both the English and Spanish sides of the honorific, “The Ballad of Cesar Chavez.”

By 1969 vocalist Little Willie G had departed, and the group’s fourth and final album, Giants, falls back on some familiar cuts (“Whittier Blvd,” “Land of a Thousand Dances” and “Love Special Delivery”) and sticks almost entirely to covers, many of which are themselves repeats. The album sounds more like the group’s debut than the progression of Unlimited. Highlights include a jazzy, five-minute instrumental arrangement of “Walk on By,” a moving take on Oscar Brown’s “Brother Where Are You,” and a stereo mix of “That’s All.” Three bonus tracks include the celebratory chant “Chicano Power,” a thick concoction of Gamble & Huff’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” and a Latinized arrangement of Hubert Laws’ “Cinderella.” By this point you could hear the Midniters laying into the same roots that Carlos Santana was exploring, and which would be more fully fleshed out by War, EW&F, AWB and others in the early 1970s. The band played with more restraint in 1969 than 1966, but also with more polish and sophistication.

These CDs were mastered from vinyl records, and there are a few sound problems, including small skips, transitory distortion, and varying fidelity. The audio artifacts aren’t persistent and do not greatly diminish the pleasure of having these tracks available on CD; still, it’s a shame Micro Werks didn’t search more deeply for better vinyl sources. Each CD is screened with the green, white and pink label of Whittier Records and packaged in a three-panel cardboard slip-case that reproduces the front and back album cover. The four discs are housed in a box that includes a fold-out poster with liner notes by Richie Unterberger. Discs 1-3 are mono, disc 4 mixes mono and stereo. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

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