The Electrifying…

I don’t remember my parents being huge jazz fans growing up. I didn’t live with my father and the only thing I remember about my mother, is her casual love of music – I mean if it was on and she liked it, she would groove a bit.

When I was 6, my grandfather taught me to play Amazing Grace on the harmonica. I then saw a movie with a cat playing a saxophone, and to me, they sounded alike, the harmonica and the sax - and I knew I couldn’t play the harmonica in the school band. Thus began my love of the E flat Alto Saxophone.

There was a closet at home that was kind of a junk closet that no one went into unless some bit of nostalgia was being sought out or some more junk needed to be hidden. I noticed once that there were several boxes of record albums, and thus began the “diggin in the crates” era of my life. Around age 6 or 7, I got my first component set. It was a record player and 2 speakers. I had the equipment but not enough records to play. Around age 10, I started remembering that closet and those boxes so I began to hunt.

What a wealth of music! There was everything from the Temps, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Miles Davis, Carlos Santana, Earth, Wind and Fire, James Brown and a Saxophone player - a man intently blowing his horn on the cover that just captured my attention. “The Electrifying Eddie Harris”; I couldn’t wait to play it. I looked at the album cover all night. I read the notes, I studied the play list.

Saturday morning arrived and even before my cereal and Saturday morning cartoons, I played the first cut from this record. It was titled “Theme in Search of a Movie”. Of course being 10, the title was just weird, but the song was infatuating. I pulled out my horn and attempted to follow the melody. It was simple enough, but at that age, improvisation was a foreign concept. I learned the melody and was eager to go on to the next song. This tune, “Listen Here” was quite intimidating. It was as funky as any record I had ever heard and just beginning to play saxophone, the melody was much harder to catch and more notes in a measure than I had played before. Basically, I never learned to play it - at least not at that age.

The other thing that was incredibly interesting about Harris was he used a newly developed instrument – the Varitone saxophone. The Varitone was an electric saxophone that was developed by H&A Selmer, Inc. (see my favorite things) in 1965. Sonny Stitt (What's New? Sonny Stitt Plays the Varitone Roulette 1966) and Eddie Harris were the main practitioners of the instrument, and both of them continued to make it a staple in their recordings and live shows. The Varitone was essentially a saxophone with a built-in effects box and amplifier that could emulate the sounds of other instruments while playing along with the natural sound of the saxophone. This created a doubling effect that increased the complexity and richness of the sound. I always believed that‘s why he titled the record “The Electrifying...”

Though I’ve not heard and or scrutinized any of Harris’ music beyond this record, I always hold this one up as one of the favorite jazz albums I own – yes mama and pop, finders keepers. Beyond the use of the Varitone, Harris’ tenor sound is among the most full, most brilliant of any tenor sax I’ve ever heard. Though he has recorded quite a bit, as I discovered by perusing his site, viewing the discography and listening to the snips, I don’t imagine he received the kind of shine he deserves for his style, sound and innovation.

His debut recording, Exodus to Jazz included his own jazz arrangement of the theme from the movie Exodus. A shortened version of this track, which featured his masterful playing in the upper register of the tenor saxophone, was heavily played on radio and became the first jazz record ever to be certified gold.
However, many jazz critics regarded commercial success as a sign that a jazz artist had sold out, and Harris soon stopped playing "Exodus" in concert. He moved to Columbia Records in 1964 and to Atlantic Records in 1965. At Atlantic in 1965 he released The In Sound, a bop album which won back many of his fans and critics alike.
In 1967 his album The Electrifying Eddie Harris reached second place on the R & B charts. And since my folx weren’t huge Jazz fans I imagine because the record hit the R & B charts is the reason they acquired it.

I love Eddie’s music, or at least this record. Now I’m interested in hearing lots more!

**Note to self: Add Eddie Harris to the list of artists worth “diggin in the crates” for??

Live at Smalls

Still in the midst of the “all things old are new again” scrutiny phase of my record collection, I found a compilation disc on the Impulse imprint called “Jazz Underground – Live at Smalls”. I remember when I picked this disc up. I was at a used CD shop searching for new jazz music other than standards or interpretations of standards. Actually, Downbeat.com prompted me to seek this out record. I knew I had it, but hadn’t listened to it in quite awhile.
Smalls is a jazz club in downtown New York. Downbeat.com defines it like this, “Smalls has made its reputation as a spot with a more mainstream jazz orientation. Opening in 1994, Smalls became the Mecca for combos and big bands with a revolving cast of players, as well as a place for all-night jamming-the sort of jazz training ground largely missing from the scene since the '50s. It also has become a hangout for record producers seeking new artists, as well as a place for live recordings.”

My imagination runs wild with what I think Smalls performers and patronage would look like or what a night would be. I imagine young cats in bohemian type garb, carrying instruments and sheet music and playing with nerd like intensity. The front part of the audience being intense patrons of the music and the back, intense patrons of the scene – you know the yuppie set. And by midnite, the music would weed out the pretenders.
Jazz is intensely complicated music. I won’t ever pretend to have the “breadth of knowledge”, jazz education in school notwithstanding, to be a serious scholar of the music. I know what I like, what I don’t like, what’s easily understood and what would be considered highly complicated. But not knowing doesn’t stop me from wanting to know. And knowing what Smalls has become to the serious scholars and virtuosos, it, of course, piqued my interest.
If I listen to a CD when I’m home, I generally read the liner notes as I am listening. I can tell which is better, the notes or the music, by how much I retain from the reading. While I can walk and chew gum at the same time, retaining notes and listening to awesome jazz is more a challenge. The liner notes for this recording were a little difficult to read – meaning I think the music is phenomenal.
I have a huge interest in experimental jazz or experimental music in general. However it is always difficult for me to listen to and understand most of the music from the Free Jazz period artists such as Ornette Coleman. Okay, so if you’ve read other parts of my blog, you notice that I mention saxophone players first and mostly…well I’m partial. I think I don’t have enough imagination to hear the music without the accompanying pianist or guitarist. I have, at times, found much joy from listening to Branford Marsalis in Trio form with a bass and a drummer. His improvisations sans piano or guitar tend to be more palatable for me…and much easier to follow. I mention this because I thought this record would follow some of the same experimental lines. It does not. It falls quite short.
The first track on this document is a slow ballad titled “Kentucky Girl” by the Omer Avital Group. It features Avital on bass, an alto saxophone, 3 tenor saxophones and drums. If this group’s line-up can’t be seen as a definition of experimental, want else can?
The song title gives you an inkling of what this song may sound like. I immediately thought of Ray Charles’ Country & Western meets the big sax sounds traditionally associated with the Texas Tenors. Avital opens the track strumming his bass and if it were a banjo, and continues with a “banjo as bass” feel through out the tune. It is an interesting mix of Jazz and Country & Western music. I don’t know how much more this should be explored, but I did enjoy it.
The next tune by the Charles Owens Quartet is a standard swing piece that tends to be interesting only in places.
One of the most intriguing parts of this recording is the throwback to the Big Band era and these young cats that have the bravado to “take it there”. “Hexophony” is a tune penned by Jason Lindner and his Big Band made up of the usual suspects of the Smalls Family. This tune sounds like it came straight from the movie, ”The Mambo Kings” and landed right onto the set of the “I Love Lucy” TV show. Lindner also checks in with another big band piece, “Phat”, which, sonically, has the right title.
Loving this record would be saying too much for me. I found it to be at least interesting but nothing extraordinary. I assumed that it would be a record that would take chances and swing harder. After the first tune, it just kinda falls flat. It has heart but no beat. Being that I have never been to Smalls, I can’t speak to the type of musicianship or innovation that goes on there, but hearing this record kinda sounds like being at a high school jazz band competition. I imagine that the record company or at least I hope this was the case, only allowed a safe recording in the hopes of getting some sales. Several of the musicians featured here have release their own records for Impulse and other labels. If innovation is the backbone of smalls, I hope that their records reflect that kind of commitment.

Sights & Sounds

When I was a kid, my cousin Robert, a music-head also, and probably where I got some of my love and all of my education for funk - the wall behind his stereo was filled with album covers. He was not the only cousin that had album cover covered walls, but his I remember and those had the most effect. Apparently it was a throwback to seventies pop-culture and design, I guess. There were all the Parliament/Funkadelic Record Covers, Tom Browne, George Duke, etc.

One of the first times a traditional old school jazz album cover caught my attention, is part of the reason I started listening to the music. Today, I don’t really remember what record it was but what I do remember is how much the cover-art struck me. And the more interesting the cover of artists I didn’t know, the more interested I was in wanting to hear their music.

In my first apartment, I was searching for decorating ideas. I hated the way it looked because it was so plain. I wanted artwork, but didn’t have the kind of ends it would take to purchase what I liked because, tuition, well you know…

One nite, I was listening to Wynton Marsalis’ “Soul Gestures in Southern Blue – ‘Thick in the South’” I believe, and I was looking at the album cover which contains a collage by Romare Bearden. Now, I mentioned my tuition woes earlier, so framed prints by Bearden where certainly out of the question – I mean if I wanted to eat. Somewhere between classic solos by Marsalis, I had a bright idea.

I took the covers of all 3 volumes and had them copied and enlarged at a printer. Then I went and purchased 3 frames and hung the covers, matted and framed on the wall above my sofa. Turned out GREAT!!

At that point, I really got a new appreciation for jazz album covers as art. So while hanging out online today, I decided to add some new artwork to the blog. Once every couple of weeks I’ll add a favorite cover to my page.

Enjoy!