Jazz?

Listening right now to this:
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Released earlier this month. It's like the missing link between In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew. The BB material is still being developed here, and the electric sound is brand new. We get to hear BB songs in their early stages as well as standards like Footprints being played with this new sound. It's very cool and has pretty good quality for a bootleg. Anyone who likes this era must hear it.
 
Thought of posting this in the progressive rock thread, but on second thought I think it does fit in better here. Seeing as it is more fusion jazz rock than strictly progressive rock. I'm currently discovering Santana in depth for the first time. Starting with the debut! :shred: If anyone cares I will add my thoughts to the albums as I go along. I'm thinking of listening to at least all his considered classic albums, so that means all of his 70s stuff from his debut up to Amigos in 76, total of 9 albums from 69 - 76.

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I'd appreciate that. :) I would especially like it if you could point out the strong points of each album, noticing the differences.
 
I'll try..With a group like Santana I'm aware that some of his albums might sound samey, so let's see if there are any noticeable differences :p . I'll definitely pull up my listening highlights from each album :yes:
 
Another album of beloved John Surman and a relatively recent one. Released in 2000, it features a few strings, a bass & John's awesome saxophone & clarinet. Though Surman lets way lot of space to the stings, kudos to him for that.

The album starts with a highly melancholic tone with the absolute masterpieces At Dusk, Dark Corners & Stone Flowers & then progressively the music without being too much happy, becomes more like chamber music. The mind gets relieved from the beautiful melancholic heaviness of the first three tracks and starts travelling.
The album ends in a low tempo, as it started but in a bit more happy tone.

And by the way, I'm not aware of any Surman studio record which the cover is less than awesome.

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Came across this concert when searching for my favourite drummer (at least in Jazz), Elvin Jones.
I hadn't seen so much footage of his later career, and looking at this guy amazes me. Still, so energetic! Here he teams up with Joey DeFrancesco on hammond & John McLaughlin on guitar.
 
Love John McLaughlin. The band he was in with Miles is probably my favorite. Had Jack Johnson on yesterday, in fact, and he really makes that album so great. His tone is unmistakeable too.
 
Oh yea. I'm actually reading Miles' autobiography and currently at that portion of his career. Really great stories, was a definite turning point for Jazz as a whole. Bitches Brew is without a doubt my favorite Miles record.

NP: Live-Evil :cool:
 
I haven't listened to that one enough, honestly. But it's one of his best bands for sure. There's plenty of albums I've missed (45 is a lot!) but I've never come across one that I like more than Bitches Brew. That album is always a trip to listen to. The way the mood is set in Pharaoh's Dance, with the electric keyboard's exotic melody, the wandering bass clarinet and John McLaughlin's rock influence. Not to mention Miles' explosive trumpet playing. It's unbeatable!
 
I have heard most of his fifties studio albums (apart from Conception, Miles Davis, Vol. 1 & 2) and sixties (apart from Quiet Nights, Seven Steps to Heaven & In a Silent Way). Also I still have to hear some more live albums.

Milestones is a must, seriously. You might not like it as much as Bitches (stylistically), but it's a great album full of variation and nice solos. I love the rhythm section (it was the last time the rhythm section of Jones, Garland and Chambers would ever play with Miles on record). I find it better than Kind of Blue. E.g., there's more going on, rhythmically.
 
In A Silent Way is pretty good. I'd recommend hearing it at least once. It really sets the tone for the albums to come.

I'll listen to Milestones again tomorrow after school. :ok:
 
Forostar said:
Milestones is a must, seriously. You might not like it as much as Bitches (stylistically), but it's a great album full of variation and nice solos. I love the rhythm section (it was the last time the rhythm section of Jones, Garland and Chambers would ever play with Miles on record). I find it better than Kind of Blue. E.g., there's more going on, rhythmically.
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Well I'm finishing up with the last tune on Milestones as I type this. Great album. I could agree about it being better than Kind Of Blue, but I like more upbeat jazz anyway. Not to take away from KOB, because I listen to that album all the time.

Rhythm section is very awesome for sure. Jones is a better drummer than Jimmy Cobb, his playing has more energy and he really drives the band. I feel like Kind Of Blue wouldn't lose anything if the drums were taken out. Miles might agree, as he said before that Jones was his favorite drummer. I also really like Coltrane's playing. He was always great at doing unexpected stuff, harmonically. This album really suits his style.

Great stuff!
 
Oh that looks good. Softly is one of my favorite standards. He did a lot of cool stuff for Impulse. There's still a ton of Coltrane that I need to discover though.
 
I am proud to say that I have all his stuff on Impulse, apart from a few albums which are from the Alice Coltrane era, a period I'm less interested in. My love for Jazz started with Coltrane, so that's what I wanted first. :)

I only need to hear these Village Vanguard recordings and Ohm.
 
Ohm is a must. You'll certainly like it.

Coltrane is a recent discovery for me. I've always known him, honestly. But it took me awhile to figure out what it was about his style that made him so acclaimed. Now albums like A Love Supreme make a lot more sense to me. I love just about everything I've heard from him now, even his soprano stuff, which is an instrument I generally can't stand.

I'm really getting into more free/avant garde Jazz lately. Listening to a ton of Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy, so that's the period of Coltrane that I'm really into lately.
 
Ohm, a must?! Hmm, one of his lowest rated and reviewed albums, at least from Impulse. Makes me more curious!

Ornette Coleman - Free Jazz is an album that I found hard to take. But I only heard it once.
Haven't heard anything else by him yet. There are some albums I'm interested in because Elvin Jones plays on them, but these are hard to get. Eric Dolphy was a big name!

Since you are into horn players, please don't skip Tina Brooks, a very underrated player in his lifetime, but now his qualities are rated much higher. This is no avant garde (let alone free!) jazz but the guy did some great solos.

Try e.g. True Blue (1960), a fine album! He also contributed well on the first Freddie Hubbard records and others: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Brooks
Michael Cuscuna in 1985, through Mosaic Records, released a boxset of Brooks' recordings as leader; the limited edition quickly sold out. The interest in Brooks' music has also led to releases of the unissued sessions through Blue Note Japan and on CD in Blue Note's Connoisseur series.

In the liner notes for the CD release of Back to the Tracks, Cuscuna wrote: "Far lesser talents have been far more celebrated" and that Brooks "was a unique, sensitive improviser who could weave beautiful and complex tapestries through his horn. His lyricism, unity of ideas and inner logic were astounding."

David Rosenthal in his work Hard Bop: Jazz and Black Music 1955-1965 dedicated a number of pages to Brooks. Of his composition "Street Singer", Rosenthal wrote that it is "an authentic hard-bop classic" where "pathos, irony and rage come together in a performance at once anguished and sinister."

The official Blue Note website says of Brooks, "With a strong, smooth tone and an amazing flow of fresh ideas every time he soloed, tenor saxophonist Tina Brooks should have been a major jazz artist, but his legacy is confined to a series of dates that he did for Blue Note as a sideman and leader" and that he "was one of the most brilliant, if underrated, tenor saxophonists in modern jazz"
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