A couple of years back, I was engaged in an on-line chat about Desert Island playlists. If you don’t know what a Desert Island playlist is, it’s a fantasy exercise where you pick a small number of songs or recordings, usually five, to take with you if you are going to be marooned on a desert island for a long time with no other company than your record player.
Here was my list.
- The first was a slam dunk. It had to be Louis Armstrong: The Hot Fives and Hot Sevens (1925-28). It’s pretty much the ur-music of jazz: the first great soloist (tied with Sidney Bechet); the breaking free of solo passages from the ensemble polyphony of earlier New Orleans-style music; the emergence of scat singing (Armstrong on “Heebie Jeebies”); and though no other instrumentalist in the group is the equal of Louis (with the possible exception of pianist Earl Hines in the final recordings), a fine set of artists, especially for the time –the Dodds brothers, Baby on drums and Johnny on clarinet, Kid Ory on trombone…. To top it off, the music is truly exciting, challenging intellectually as well as emotionally. This set had to be first.
Equally, the Duke Ellington’s Blanton-Webster Band (1940-45? 46?) had to be second. Great compositions from Ellington and his alter ego Jimmy Strayhorn. (And one from valve trombonist Juan Tizol: “Caravan.”) Ben Webster, the second great tenor sax player of the swing era (after Coleman Hawkins) and probably the most accessible, allied here with the master of lyric and bluesy alto, Johnny Hodges; the first great baritone saxophonist, Harry Carney; trumpeters like Rex Stewart and Cootie Williams; and my favorite ever trombonist, wah wah mute master Tricky Sam Nanton. Lastly, the creator of modern bass playing, Jimmy Blanton. There is no collection, not even the Armstrong set, that has so many consistently exceptional compositions on it. The Ellington band wasn’t the swingingest band of the Swing Era –that was Basie’s, with Chick Webb’s behind it—but it was the band with the closest melding of composition, tone color and soloists, which is to be expected because its principal composer, Ellington, rode with, played with and wrote for the musicians he had in the band at the time.
- Third, I picked John Coltrane’s Ascension (1965; released 1966), which is a more successful version of the experiment tried by Ornette Coleman on his slightly earlier Free Jazz, where multiple performers –in this case, two trumpets, two altos, three tenors, piano, two basses, and polyrhythmic, always exciting Elvin Jones on drums–play together and solo over a pulsing, churning background of drums, bass and piano. Theme statements are minimal, mostly a place to return to after stretching out, temporary oases in the midst of a barrage of sound. Chord progressions were optional rather than required, modes followed rather than chords. The ensemble membership on Trane’s album is virtually an Honor Roll of young jazz musicians of the day: Freddie Hubbard and Dewey Johnson on trumpet (Johnson’s subsequent mental problems derailed a promising career); Marion Brown and John Tchichai on alto; Trane, Pharaoh Sanders and Archie Shepp on tenor; McCoy Tyner, piano; Art Davis and Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums. The San Francisco-based progressive saxophone quartet, ROVA, recorded Ascension twice over, once with conventional instruments (trumpeter Dave Douglas stands out), the second time –a stunner album— under the title Electric Ascension, with violins, electric guitars, a vinyl scratch artist, etc. What the ROVA recordings show is how much structure Coltrane’s seemingly unstructured piece actually has.
- Fourth is Roscoe Mitchell’s double album Nonaah (1977). It shows what’s brilliant and exciting about front edge jazz. The Art Ensemble of Chicago may have been a collaborative group but Mitchell was the driving force in it and the greatest, also most cerebral, of its soloists. He was –is– a formidable composer, ranging from simple, almost homey melodies through bop and post-bop on to Stockhausen-like experimental music. This collection includes three very different renditions of the title song, one less than two minutes,long solo version, and a 27-minute version scored for four saxophones. Modernist Anthony Braxton plays on some cuts, as does bassist Malachi Favors, and on one cut, Mitchell and Braxton duet on extreme saxophone instruments (Braxton’s is above the soprano sax in range).
Italy’s Gianluigi Trovesi and Gianni Coscia: In Cerca di Cibo (1999) is a gorgeous album –Trovesi’s clarinet, alternating jazz, classical and Italian folk influences, allied with accordionist Coscia’s equally alt music.
Alternatives might be
- Carla Bley: Trios (2013),
an amazing album that combines Bley’s compositions and arranger’s piano with the more overt soloing of two great modern but not too modern artists, electric bass guitarist Steve Swallow (Bley’s life partner) and tenor sax player Andy Sheppard. “Utviklingssang,” the first cut, is eight minutes of mood, yearning and contemplation. The three have been playing together for twenty some years and it shows. A master composer-arranger who has stripped her esthetic vision from large down to small/intimate and who eschews frills in favor of baring her soul to the listening world. - The one-time collaboration among five prime musicians from the mid-fifties: Grand Encounter: 2 Degrees East 3 Degrees West (1956) features pianist John Lewis and bassist Percy Heath from the Modern Jazz Quartet, guitarist Jim Hall and drummer Chico Hamilton from Hamilton’s influential soft jazz quintet (which featured a cello), and as an add-on, Kenton alumnus tenor saxophonist Bill Perkins. This is one of the great albums of jazz: the musicians spoke the language of bop but filtered through the sensibility of Basie-type swing. Perkins, Lewis and Hall each get a solo showcase. The rhythm shuffles along behind them as though on ball bearings. It‘s Feel Good Music but with serious muscle inside it.
- Either John Lewis’s collaboration with French musicians tenor player Barney Wilen and young guitarist Sacha Distel –Kenny Clarke on drums and Pierre Michelot on bass —Afternoon in Paris [1957] or Bob Brookmeyer‘s 7 x Wilder [1961], with Brookmeyer playing the compositions of Alex Wilder, alternating between valve trombone and piano, and Jim Hall on guitar, Bill Crow on bass, and master drummer Mel Lewis. Listen especially to “Blues for Alex.”
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I’ve left off this list the great Basie band of the end of the thirties, start of the forties –Jo Jones, drums, Walter Page bass, Lester Young, tenor, and Buck Clayton, trumpet, Dickie Wells trombone, etc., and Basie’s wonderful, spare piano noodling; Fats Waller and Art Tatum; Sonny Rollins Blue note vol. 2 (Wail March), with Rollins on tenor, JJ Johnson trombone, Thelonious Monk and Horace Silver alternating on piano, Art Blakey –my favorite drummer- and Paul Chambers on bass.
Why no Charlie Parker or Dizzy Gillespie? Because, great and influential as their recordings together are, I don’t think I’d end up listening to them as much in that setting (alone and on an island) as I would the albums above. Ditto Miles, though it’s tempting to consider Tribute to Jack Johnson.
ADDITIONAL LISTENING
John Coltrane: “Ascension” (1965)
Roscoe Mitchell: “Ericka” (1977)
Gianluigi Trovesi-Gianni Coscia: “Django (Donadona)” (2000)
John Lewis and Sacha Distel: “Afternoon in Paris” (1957)
Bob Brookmeyer: “While We’re Young” (1961)
MUSIC & ME 