As Flann O'Brien once wrote, in "At-Swim-Two-Birds":"When things go wrong and will not come right,
Though you do the best you can,
When life seems black as the hour of night,
A pint of plain is your only man."
Well, the man was an alcoholic, so his RX for the blues was a little narrow.
Jazz may not be the magic elixir. It may not make the lame strap on roller blades. It may not even make ugly people look better at closing time, but still we turn to it for succor.
In this needy state, you may find your choices are less adventurous than usual. If it was food you chose to fill the hole in your soul, you might pass on the escargots and go for the beef stew. It's it's music, you might opt for cozy over adventurous-at least I do. What do I want for my "comfort jazz"? Allowing myself the obligatory ten choices:
Mulligan, Getz and Brookmeyer together.
Late Billie Holiday
Early Ellington
Coltrane's Crescent
Miles on Prestige
Dizzy singing
Clifford's "Ghost of a Chance"
King Pleasure
Ella doing ballads during the 50's
Eldridge-"After You've Gone"
What's your jazz for solace?
13 comments:
This from Diana Lily: "The entire Hartman & Coltrane album (Impulse 1963) still has the power to melt my bones. Chet singing. Art Pepper, too."
My response: Funny how Chet and Art can get it done: junk food.
oughta smack you for that one
Wish you'd stop horsing around.
we just can't go on in this vein
Clark Terry
Trane/Hartman
Miles (50s)
Elis Regina
Maynard Ferguson
Blakey - Messengers
Freddie Hubbard
Dexter Gordon
bigtiny-thanks for the elis regina reference. Didn't know her, checked her out-addictive voice.
Mostly 1950s era piano solo (Monk, Evans, Powell) and trio dates (Powell and Evans again, Kenny Drew, Ahmad Jamal).
Says Harvey N.: "Charlie Parker with Strings" Cal Tjader, "Soul Sauce"
My guilty pleasures involve a lot of 70s jazz rock....yikes!
Weather Report - Black Market
Herbie Hancock-Headhunters
Oregon-Out of the Woods
Weather Report-Mysterious Traveller
Keith Jarrett-Koln Concert
Stanley Clarke-School Days
Anything from.the Three Sounds...or with Gene Harris
Miles-Kind of Blue
Trane-any of the Ballade or the Johnny Hartman set
Blakey-any of the dates with Bobby Timmons
ELIS.REGINA.
(My Queen)
George says: "The Single Petal of a Rose" from Queen's Suite and "Lotus Blossom" from "And His Mother Called Him Bill" by Duke Ellington
"One Never Knows" from "No Sun in Venice" by MJQ
I say-I feel better just hearing the titles.
Jeri Southern, the Tommy Dorsey & Jimmy Dorsey orchestra's from the late 40's, early 50's, Dizzy with Strings (the French sides), mostly all 1960's trios with Oscar Peterson, and some of his early 1970's LP's, some splendid (jazzy) soundtracks from the 50's, and early 60's (I hope I mustn't go into detail, must I?), Roy Eldridge in Paris (early 50's) ... Gosh, there are more, but I don't want to receive that idiotic error message from Google.
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