Record Store Day, April 20, 2024
Record Store Day, April 20, 2024
Lester Bangs considered them sacred...
…and that perusing a record store is a liturgy.
The vinyl reboot that we have been experiencing in the past decade has had a very positive effect on music. While vinyl recordings have their beautiful, warm, analog, and nostalgic richness, technology has provided listeners with many more ways to experience music. The annual Record Store Day has become an event if, for no other reason, the mountain of music made available in the run-up. Here is a sampling:
Art Tatum
Pianist Art Tatum defies description or categorization in the history of jazz. When historians speak of the greatest innovators in jazz piano, Bud Powell and Bill Evans are always mentioned and largely have no peers. Writers describe Art Tatum as, “…an American jazz pianist who is widely regarded as one of [if not] the greatest ever.”1 Tatum was no innovator. He was the greatest technician of jazz piano: a historian and interpreter. A man with so profound a technique that he did not have to innovate, he merely performed. These unreleased live recordings of Tatum with his trio mates, guitarist Everett Barksdale and bassist Slam Stewart, were isolated from takes of shows played at the Chicago Blue Note Club in the fall of 1953. Tatum’s repertoire is predictable which in no way cheapens the listening experience. Tatum is at full throttle. It is fun to imagine a trio of Tatum, Joe Pass, and Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (something we almost have in the Oscar Peterson trios with the same).
Sonny Rollins
Resonance Records deserves praise for the honest release of Sonny Rollins’ 1959 European Tour performances. St. Thomas - Sonny Rollins Trio In Stockholm 1959 has been available as a bootlegged recording on Dragon Records for many years. These excellent performances warrant legitimacy, and, in the bargain, remastering that befits such a classic. Recorded with bassist Henry Grimes and drummers Pete La Roca, Kenny Clarke, and Joe Harris, these sides represent the best Sonny Rollins from the period. Rollins innovated the pianoless saxophone trio beginning on Way Out West (Contemporary, 1957); Freedom Suite (Riverside, 1958), and galvanizing the format with his famous A Night at the "Village Vanguard" (Blue Note, 1958). It was directly from this trajectory that these concerts occurred. Rollins ascends to the top of his art on these recordings to his present place in American music.
Mal Waldron & Steve Lacy
Pianist Mal Waldron and soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy first performed together on Lacy’s second recording Reflections: Steve Lacy Plays Thelonious Monk (Prestige, 1959). Not a likely pair, the two musicians bonded over their shared interest in Thelonious Monk and the orbit of the avant-garde retaining melody as a compass. Thirty-five years later the pair were still performing together, pushing the boundaries of progressive jazz as the melody approached atonality. The Mighty Warriors is a collection of performances by Waldron and Lacy in Antwerp in 1995. Both men were far beyond their initial recording together, each searching his way to extend the language of music. Bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Andrew Cyrille round out the quartet, with Workman providing his lengthy consideration “Variation Of III.” Monk’s “Epistrophy” and “Monk’s Dream” are well presented. Waldron contributed “What It Is,” Snake Out,” and “Variations On A Theme By Cecil Taylor,” as well as steered the quartet. The music is an important element of the evolution from Billie Holiday to this side of John Coltrane.
Sun Ra
Herman Poole Blount, aka Sun Ra, was the inevitable evolutionary result of a growth environment that included Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman. Sun Ra would become an artist never content with the present, always pressing forward as a permanent revolution. He was, at once, steeped in tradition while at the same time metabolizing it. Ra’s music must not be mistaken for free jazz. It approaches elemental free jazz stopping short of a complete loss of form. Sun Ra was able to carve out a place in jazz not unlike that of Art Blakey, providing a learning atmosphere compatible with the disparate artists each band would produce. The bandleader enjoyed residencies at the Chicago Jazz Showcase during 1976-77 resulting in Sun Ra - At The Showcase: Live In Chicago 1976-1977. Ra’s musical universe was big and growing bigger in these performances. Just check out the one standard, “Rose Room.” Jazz is a durable art.
Chet Baker & Jack Sheldon
The charm of Chet Baker & Jack Sheldon - In Perfect Harmony: The Lost Album is that it offers a contrasting view of two West Coast jazz schools of thought. Chet Baker and Jack Sheldon were contemporaries, both noted trumpeters and vocalists whose styles could be no more different. This project was one of the first in years to feature Baker as a leader. Since the 1966 brutal beating in San Francisco, left Baker without teeth, it would be a slog for Baker to return to fighting weight. These 1972 performances show Baker as a straight man to Sheldon’s showmanship. Baker was the serious technician for once in the sunshine of Sheldon’s greater celebrity. While the songs are straight out of the Songbook (“Just Friends,” “But Not For Me,” “I’m Old Fashioned”) there were surprises in Sheldon’s performances of the Sheldon original “Too Blue” and “Historie de un Amor” sung in the original. A Perfect Harmony is a fun and serious recording by any measure, featuring two very different faces of West Coast jazz.
Wikipedia Contributors. (2024, April 17). Art Tatum. Wikipedia; Wikimedia Foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Tatum. Added text am emphasis by me.