JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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I’ve got to admit, I feel a little bit sorry for Charles Mingus. (Just a little bit, okay? I mean, I’d be happy to have the talent he had in his little pinky or one tenth his career in music.)
You see, back in 1959, Charles Mingus was absolutely at the vanguard […]

DON’T BOTHER
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If the inclusion of multiple musical genres and thematic cohesiveness were enough to make a piece of music a masterpiece, Bob Moses’ The Story of Moses would surely qualify. A cursory analysis of The Story of Moses would reveal hip hop, funk, salsa, rock, and traditional Yiddish musical influences. No less an authority […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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In order to appreciate Wide Angles, you have to approach it the right way. Brecker is not playing small combo jazz, in which you would expect him to interact extensively with the other musicians, such as violinst Mark Feldman. Wide Angles (issued on the Verve label) is a date like the […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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Not everybody is going to love Live! (issued on the ECM label) the way I do. I think it all depends on your sense of humor.
Take the opener, Blunt Object. The first time I heard that tune, my stomach hurt from laughing so hard. After listening to it dozens of times, […]

JAZZBO NOTES HIGHLY RECOMMENDED RECORDING
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The general critical consensus on Wayne Shorter is that he has been creatively fallow since his Weather Report days, and is only now beginnning to recapture the glory of his Blue Note years. That’s just nonsense. Critics simply weren’t able to follow Shorter’s innovations and were too lazy to put […]

JAZZBO NOTES HIGHLY RECOMMENDED RECORDING
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Gary McFarland’s America the Beautiful is hard to classify. Certainly it’s a big band jazz album. Contained within the orchestra is the quintet of Warren Bernhardt on piano, Eric Gayle on guitar, Chuck Rainey or Jerry Jemmott on bass, Bernard Purdie or Bill Lavorgna on drums, and Warren Smith on […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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True, I’d heard Jim McNeely play before. He did a bang up job in the piano chair playing John Coltane tunes on Dave Liebman’s classic Homage To John Coltrane. But East Coast Blow Out was the first time I heard Jim McNeely do what he was put on this planet for […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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The last of the great Milestone releases, The 13nth House stands as possibly the most successful big band album McCoy Tyner has yet attempted. All of the tunes are wonderful, written and performed in the signature modal style Tyner developed and perfected throughout the Milestone years.
McCoy’s orchestrations, although […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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Word of Mouth underlines the tragedy of Jaco Pastorius’ premature death at the hands of a bouncer in Florida, which occurred while Jaco was stoned and belligerent. Word of Mouth revealed that, had he lived, Jaco’s greatest legacy might have been, not his bass playing, but his […]

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING
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This is going to sound sort of funny since I’m saying that Journey to Love is an essential work, but there are songs on this release that aren’t all that great. Concerto for Jazz, which is over 14 minutes long, is kind of uneven in quality, even […]