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Miles Davis - It Ain’t Necessarily So (1958)
More from Miles on his birthday.
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Sonny Clark - Can’t We Be Friends (1958)
These Sonny Clark standards are impossible to forget. The more I listen the better they sound. His sense of swing is so easy and feathery and elegant, and yet so thoroughly visceral and deep that it hits you where it counts.
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Sonny Clark - Deep Night (1958)
From Sam Stephenson’s article, Sonny Clark: Melody and Melancholy, in the most recent issue of Tin House Magazine:
I asked the novelist Haruki Murakami, who once owned a jazz club, why Cool Struttin’ is so popular in Japan. He attributed it to the rise of the “jazz kissa” (jazz coffee shops) in the 1960s.
“The popularity of Cool Struttin’ was not driven by professional critics or by sales,” wrote Murakami by e-mail, “but instead by youths who didn’t have enough money to buy vinyl records, so they went to coffee shops to hear jazz on the house record player. This was a phenomenon particular to Japan, or at least very different from America.”
Clark’s buoyant blues fit the underground mood of Japan’s postwar youth. It didn’t hurt that his tragic life made him an unconventional, forlorn icon, too.
Paul Chambers during the Sonny Rollins Volume 2 session, Hackensack NJ, April 14 1957 (photo by Francis Wolff)
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Jackie McLean - Davis Cup (1959)
From the Allmusic review:
The cut that the musicians seem to dig into the most is [Walter] Davis’ twisting, turning bopper “Davis Cup,” which sports a rhumba beat and a bevy of exciting solos.
Appearing on shuffle last night, this track jolted my ears with its sheer delight. Pete LaRoca’s drumming inspires.
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Kenny Dorham - Sunset (1961)
From Ira Gitler’s original liner notes:
This is an expressive piece. You can almost feel the chill of evening descending after a hot, dry southwestern day. Kenny’s muted trumpet sensitively heralds the night and Mobley’s tenor suggests the lengthening shadows.
I have a big soft spot for each one of these hard bop heavies, but especially for the Dorham/Mobley front line. This LP is magic all around and highly recommended.
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Bennie Green - Can’t We Be Friends (1958)
Bennie Green, Sonny Clark, Paul Chambers et al, swinging for the fences.
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Bennie Green - It’s Groovy (1958)
Yes, it is.
This recording went unreleased until the Japanese cut a deal to release “the other side of the Blue Note 1500 series” in the early ’80s. Notwithstanding the LP’s apparent obscurity, it is a humdinger, especially when you consider the appearance of the in-form and ever-swinging Sonny Clark, and Bennie Green’s voice-like trombone stylings.
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Sonny Clark - Tadd’s Delight (1957)
Tadd Dameron’s absolutely delightful, syncopated yet swinging head leads into a terse Mr. P.C. bass solo and then into Sonny Clark’s long, flowing, jaunty lines, lines that have haunted and besotted this listener for a while now.
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Paul Chambers - Whims of Chambers (1956)
Kenny Burrell and Paul Chambers face off.
