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Bebop Spoken There

Branford Marsalis: "As ignorance often forces us to do, you make a generalisation about a musician based on one specific record or one moment in time." - (Jazzwise June 2023).

The Things They Say!

Hudson Music: Lance's "Bebop Spoken Here" is one of the heaviest and most influential jazz blogs in the UK.

Rupert Burley (Dynamic Agency): "BSH just goes from strength to strength".

'606' Club: "A toast to Lance Liddle of the terrific jazz blog 'Bebop Spoken Here'"

The Strictly Smokin' Big Band included Be Bop Spoken Here (sic) in their 5 Favourite Jazz Blogs.

Ann Braithwaite (Braithwaite & Katz Communications) You’re the BEST!

Holly Cooper, Mouthpiece Music: "Lance writes pull quotes like no one else!"

Postage

15491 (and counting) posts since we started blogging 15 years ago. 512 of them this year alone and, so far, 133 this month (May 31).

From This Moment On ...

June

Sat 03: Newcastle Record Fair @ Northumbria University, Newcastle NE8 8SB. 10:00am-3:00pm. Admission: £2.00.
Sat 03: Pedigree Jazz Band @ St Augustine's Parish Centre, Darlington. 12:30pm.
Sat 03: Play Jazz! workshop @ The Globe, Newcastle. 1:30pm. Tutor: Sue Ferris. £25.00. Enrol at: www.jazz.coop.
Sat 03: Abbie Finn Trio @ The Vault, Darlington. 6:00pm. Free.
Sat 03: Rendezvous Jazz @ Red Lion, Earsdon. 8:00pm. £3.00.
Sat 03: Papa G's Troves @ Prohibition Bar, Newcastle. 8:00pm. A 'Jar on the Bar' gig.

Sun 04: Smokin' Spitfires @ The Cluny, Newcastle. 12:45pm.
Sun 04: Central Bar Quintet @ Central Bar, Gateshead. 2:00-4:00pm. £5.00. The Central Bar Quintet plays Sonny Rollins' Saxophone Colossus. Featuring Lewis Watson.
Sun 04: 4B @ The Exchange, North Shields. 3:00pm.
Sun 04: Struggle Buggy + Michael Littlefield @ Tyne Bar, Newcastle. 4:00pm. Free. Acoustic blues.
Sun 04: Swinging at the Cotton Club: Harry Strutters' Hot Rhythm Orchestra @ The Fire Station, Sunderland. 7:30pm.
Sun 04: Richard Jones Trio @ The Globe, Newcastle. 8:00pm.
Sun 04: Jam No. 18 @ Fabio's Bar, Saddler Street, Durham. 8:00pm. Free. All welcome. A Durham University Jazz Society event.

Mon 05: Harmony Brass @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm.

Tue 06: Paul Skerritt @ The Rabbit Hole, Hallgarth St., Durham DH1 3AT. 7:00pm. Paul Skerritt's (solo) weekly residency.
Tue 06: Jam session @ Black Swan, Newcastle Arts Centre. 7:30pm. House trio: Stu Collingwood (piano); Paul Grainger (double bass); Sid White (drums).

Wed 07: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm.
Wed 07: Darlington Big Band @ Darlington & Simpson Rolling Mills Social Club, Darlington. 7:00pm. Rehearsal session (open to the public).
Wed 07: 4B @ The Exchange, North Shields. 7:00pm.
Wed 07: Take it to the Bridge @ The Globe, Newcastle. 7:30pm.

Thu 08: Vieux Carré Jazzmen @ The Holystone, Whitley Road, North Tyneside. 1:00pm. Free. CANCELLED! BACK ON JUNE 15.
Thu 08: Easington Colliery Brass Band @ The Lubetkin Theatre, Peterlee. 7:00pm. £10.00.
Thu 08: Faye MacCalman + Blue Dust Archive @ Cobalt Studios, Newcastle. 7:00pm.
Thu 08: Dilutey Juice + Ceramic @ The Ampitheatre, Sea Road, South Shields. 7:00pm. Free. A South Tyneside Festival event.
Thu 08: Lara Jones w. Vigilance State @ Lubber Fiend, Blandford Square, Newcastle. 7:00pm.
Thu 08: Michael Littlefield @ the Harbour View, Roker, Sunderland. 8:00pm. Free. Country blues.
Thu 08: Tees Hot Club @ Dorman's Club, Middlesbrough. 9:00pm.

Fri 09: Classic Swing @ Cullercoats Crescent Club. 1:00pm.
Fri 09: New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band @ Oxbridge Hotel, Stockton. 1:00pm. £5.00.
Fri 09: Rendezvous Jazz @ The Monkseaton Arms, Monkseaton. 1:00pm.
Fri 09: Castillo Nuevo @ Revolución de Cuba, Newcastle. 5:30-8:30pm.
Fri 09: Emma Rawicz @ Sage Gateshead. 8:00pm.

Monday, August 21, 2017

CD Review: Power of Peace by the Isley Brothers and Santana.

(Review by Steve T)
 Jazz is an ocean. Rock and roll is a swimming pool. I hang out on a lake. Carlos Santana, Guardian 2000.

(ST: For anybody who doesn't follow such things, when somebody like Carlos talks about rock and roll, he doesn't mean Elvis, Chuck and Little, but boy bands with guitars, generally British, and I'd stick them in a puddle.)

The album combines one of the greatest ever rock bands and one of the greatest ever soul bands, and to extend Carlos' metaphor once more, soul music is a well: it's deep, underground, hard to find, hard to get, but sustains life.
Santana has been very close to jazz throughout his almost half-century, and has played with Alice Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Alphonso Johnson, John McLaughlin and others.
Sadly, the album doesn't live up to its promise, but when you consider these bands peaked between the late sixties and early eighties, perhaps no great surprise.
Ronald Isley has been one of the most distinctive, soulful vocalists in music but is not the singer he was in the seventies, eighties, sixties, fifties, nineties or noughties.
Carlos and Ernie are two of the great post-Hendrix guitarists, but Ernie is relegated to that of a guest, with Carlos going through his regular traits, motifs and, I'm afraid, clichés. When he recorded a tribute album to John Coltrane with John McLaughlin, it was always possible to distinguish between the dexterity of the latter and the tenderness of Carlos, who Clapton once described as 'the most soulful guitarist of us all'.
Hendrix was a former guitarist with the Isley Brothers and had a massive influence on a young Ernie, and seeing him down on his knees playing Summer Breeze with his teeth was a highlight of my life. Sadly, Funkadelics’ Eddie Hazell is generally considered the great funk guitarist, but Ernie is every bit as good but under-rated these days.  
There are some interesting choices on the album, like Swamp Doggs’ Total Destruction of Your Mind. Swamp Dogg operates on the margins of soul, like a Sun Ra, Captain Beefheart or Tom Waits and, like his fellow jazz and rock weirdos, people like the idea of him as much as the music, and no bad thing either.
A beefed up, rocked up, funked up version of Stevie Wonders Higher Ground features the inevitable rap, a genre both groups have utilised in the past, and here it works helping make this the strongest track on the set.
Gypsy Woman was the first Impressions’ hit to be written and sung by a young Curtis Mayfield back in 1961. Here they seem to take Womack’s mid-eighties rendition as a starting point and take it a step or two further, but it doesn't really work. 
I Just Want To Make Love To You by Willie Dixon, who wrote almost all the Chicago Blues Classics, takes Muddy Waters psychedelic version, and is equally unsuccessful.
Carlos decided to record with Ronald when he heard the singer doing Bacharach/David songs 'making the listener hear familiar lyrics almost as if for the first time', and this songwriting pair are likely to become even more covered moving forward. However, they fail to bring anything new to What The World Needs Now Is Love Sweet Love, lightweight even by the twee standard of pop music at the time, so some tasteful selecting and valid reinterpretation needs to be made.
Ronald Isley is one of the few singers who could have taken on Mercy Mercy Me, which closes side one (cassette, vinyl) of Marvin Gaye’s masterpiece, but not any longer. This version loses the What's Going On melody which sends a shiver through every soul fan but retains the doomsday coda.
God Bless the Child and Let the Rain Fall on Me are two stabs at Jazz and the latter is much jazzier and works much better.
Not even a missed opportunity; that would have been forty years ago. But if it puts both names back on social/media, some may go out and buy the Latin flavoured Abraxis or the jazz-rock of Caravanserai, both constant features of Sanata. Or albums by the Isleys, starting with 3+3 which formally added Ernie; an album which changed my life twice, and is the sort of album that makes you realise how just how ridiculous these silly lists of glorified pop records are.
Steve T.
Ronald Isley, Cindy Blackman Santana (vocals), Carlos Santana, Ernie Isley (guitars).
Featuring: Greg Phillinganes, Benny Rietveld, Tommy Anthony, Karl Perazzo, David Mathews, Kandy and Tracey Isley, Kimberly Johnson, Andy Vargos, Eddie Levert, Charles Boomer, Cornell Carter, Jim Reitzel.

1 comment :

Joe said...

Totally agree. The Isleys have never been the same since the breakup in 1983 that spawned the spinoff group of Ernie Isley, Chris Jasper and Marvin Isley. The Isleys could no longer write and record their own music. Once the Isley Jasper Isley trio ended, Ernie went back to Ron but the Isley sound continued on with Chris Jasper, who has released about fourteen albums of new music to date, all written and recorded by Jasper. If they were released as Isley Brothers albums, the gold and platinum albums would have continued for the Isleys until today. But Ron has had to depend on others to put out an Isley Brothers album, like Winbush and R. Kelly, and in this case, an Isleys/Santana album.

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