Sunday Shopping

(By Lance)

Apart from the music, the real ale and the jazz talk with friends old and new, one of the highlights of the CJP is the CD stall. The live music may be closer to ragtime than bebop but the record stall knows no such boundaries and, apart from albums by the performers - Christmas is coming and we have the perfect stocking filler for you routine (that phrase always makes me think that they must think that our friends have funny shaped legs) - there were albums covering eras from the past to the present and beyond. I half expected to find a couple of cylinders by Buddy Bolden but maybe Dave Kerr beat me to it.

Now, despite the pile of review CDs awaiting their turn (oh he's still not harping on about that I hear you say) I found myself splashing out for three gems that I somehow never got around to buying back in the day.

Billie Holiday's Songs For Distingué Lovers was dismissed by some of the critics when it first came out not long before her death but, to my ears, it's as good as anything she did in her earlier years. The voice is stronger and more assertive without losing that plaintive and emotional quality that was there irrespective of the era. Super solos by Ben Webster, Sweets Edison, Barney Kessel, Jimmy Rowles and that most underrated drummer Alvin Stoller made this the real deal when it comes to the classic jazz vocal album.

Talking of classic line-ups, they don't come much better than (collectively) the players on Benny Carter's Further Definitions & Additions to Further Definitions. Carter, Bud Shank and Phil Woods on alto saxes, Coleman Hawkins, Teddy Edwards, Buddy Collette, Bill Perkins and Charlie Rouse on tenor, Bill Hood on baritone. Plus a rhythm section that collectively includes Don Abney (piano); Barney Kessel, John Collins and Mundell Lowe (guitars); Ray Brown (bass) and, once more, Alvin Stoller (drums). Great, easily identifiable musicians, blowing on some good tunes all arranged by Benny Carter.

 

The final five quider that I picked up - Charles Mingus & Friends in Concert - is another blast. How could it not be with guys like Dizzy, Faddis, Konitz, Moody, Mulligan, Ammons, McPherson, Randy Weston, Milt Hinton and a whole gang of others taking the roof of Lincoln Center. I don't know where I was on February 4, 1972, but I know where I would liked to have been!

Lance