Recording of the Month

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Thursday, February 27, 2020

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Back Cover

Details: Written by Joseph Taylor; Category: Recording of the Month; Created: 01 February 2020

ECM 1001 (LP)
ECM 0110 (24-bit/96kHz WAV)

Musical Performance: ***½
Sound Quality: ****
Overall Enjoyment: ****

Jazz pianist Mal Waldron moved from New York to Munich in 1967, and thereafter, until his death, in 2002, did most of his recording in Europe. He’d performed and recorded as a leader and sideman since the early 1950s, and had found that American -- especially African-American -- jazz musicians were treated and paid better across the Atlantic.

Details: Written by Joseph Taylor; Category: Recording of the Month; Created: 01 January 2020

Impulse! 000602577573736
Format: LP

Musical Performance: *****
Sound Quality: ****
Overall Enjoyment: ****

Charles Mingus recorded three albums for Impulse! Records, and one of them, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1963), is among his masterpieces. It stands with two other Mingus albums, Pithecanthropus Erectus (Atlantic, 1956) and Mingus Ah Um (Columbia, 1959), as essential jazz recordings that belong in any collection of American music. Mingus went so far as to write, in the liner notes for Black Saint, “I feel no need to explain any further the music herewith other than to say throw all other records of mine away except maybe one other.” He doesn’t name the other record.

Details: Written by Joseph Taylor; Category: Recording of the Month; Created: 01 December 2019

Apple B0030719-01
Format: LP

Musical Performance: *****
Sound Quality: ***
Overall Enjoyment: ***½

The Beatles’ Abbey Road turned 50 in September, and Apple Corps Limited, along with Universal Music and, in the US, Capitol Records, have marked the occasion with six commemorative packages, much as they did with the 50th-anniversary editions of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and The Beatles (aka “The White Album”).

Details: Written by Joseph Taylor; Category: Recording of the Month; Created: 01 November 2019

Atlantic/Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab MFSL 1-415
Format: LP

Musical Performance: ****
Sound Quality: ****½
Overall Enjoyment: ****½

For a while in the 1970s, it seemed that one American band might be a match for the Rolling Stones. The J. Geils Band had a firm foundation in blues, soul, and R&B, and few bands then touring were tighter or more dynamic onstage. I saw them four times in the ’70s, and only Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band could match them for stage presence and intensity.

Details: Written by Joseph Taylor; Category: Recording of the Month; Created: 01 October 2019

Impulse! 000602577573781
Format: LP

Musical Performance: ****½
Sound Quality: ****
Overall Enjoyment: ****

In 1963, bassist, composer, and bandleader Charles Mingus recorded three albums for Impulse! Records. The first of these, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, is one of his best, and fit the Impulse! aesthetic of recording cutting-edge jazz. The third, Mingus Plays Piano, is a unique and valuable look at Mingus on the instrument he used to write his brilliant music.

Details: Written by Joseph Taylor; Category: Recording of the Month; Created: 01 September 2019

“Baby Face” Willette: “Face to Face”

Blue Note B0029750-01
Format: LP

Musical Performance: ****½
Sound Quality: *****
Overall Enjoyment: *****

Grant Green: “Grant’s First Stand”

Blue Note B7745061
Format: LP

Musical Performance: ****
Sound Quality: ****½
Overall Enjoyment: ****½

Blue Note’s celebration of its 80th birthday continues, and I wanted to cover two new pressings featuring nearly the same players but released in different reissue series. “Baby Face” Willette’s Face to Face has been returned to print on vinyl as part of the Tone Poet series, mastered by Kevin Gray under Joe Harley’s supervision. Grant Green’s Grant’s First Stand is part of the Blue Note 80 series, also mastered by Gray but produced by Don Was.

Details: Written by Joseph Taylor; Category: Recording of the Month; Created: 01 August 2019

Verve 80029739-02 (2 CDs), B0029738-01 (3 LPs)
Formats: CD and LP

Musical Performance: ****½
Sound Quality: ***½
Overall Enjoyment: ****

When Stan Getz returned to the US in 1961 after three years in Europe, John Coltrane had just won the top slot in the Downbeat and Metronome jazz polls, a position Getz had held for the previous 11 years, and Sonny Rollins was returning to the scene after two years of study and practice. Coltrane and Rollins were now the leading tenor players of the day. Getz was a little out of step.

Details: Written by Joseph Taylor; Category: Recording of the Month; Created: 01 July 2019

ECM 2626 B0029977-02 (CD), 2626 7739824 (LP)
Formats: CD and LP

Musical Performance: ****
Sound Quality: ****
Overall Enjoyment: ****

Two years ago, ECM released Small Town, a collection of duo performances by guitarist Bill Frisell and double bassist Thomas Morgan. Recorded in March 2016 at the Village Vanguard, the album’s eight tracks drew songs from different genres -- jazz, rock, country, film soundtracks -- to create a wonderful example of two musicians intimately communicating with and bringing out each other’s best.

Details: Written by Joseph Taylor; Category: Recording of the Month; Created: 01 June 2019

Verve 00602577089619
Format: LP

Musical Performance: ***½
Sound Quality: ***½
Overall Enjoyment: ***½

Vinyl’s health -- it’s grown in sales every year since 2011 -- continues in a physical media marketplace that’s otherwise shrinking. In 2018, LP sales in the US alone totaled nearly 17 million units, and close to one-third of revenues from physical recording formats. So it’s a little surprising that some record labels have been slow to take advantage of this revitalized segment of the market. Verve’s foot-dragging is especially puzzling given the fact that the label is, with Blue Note -- now committed to reissuing much of its catalog on vinyl -- part of Universal Music.

Details: Written by Joseph Taylor; Category: Recording of the Month; Created: 01 May 2019

Blue Note B0029413-01
Format: LP

Musical Performance: ****
Sound Quality: ****
Overall Enjoyment: ****

When saxophonist Sam Rivers began recording as a leader for Blue Note Records in 1964, he’d played briefly in Miles Davis’s quintet, and had also played in sessions led by Tony Williams, the drummer in Davis’s band. Rivers was a bit too avant-garde for Davis, who replaced him with Wayne Shorter. The four albums Rivers made for Blue Note between 1964 and 1973 were cutting edge, but still accessible enough for the label’s loyalists.