ONE LP

EDUCATION | EXHIBITIONS: ONE LP EXH@BCU/RHYTHM CHANGES: THIRD FLOOR SECTION 2

The One LP Project - Rhythm Changes International Conference: Jazz Utopia - School of Media and the Faculty of Art, Design and Media, Birmingham City University. 

Outline 

One LP is a unique and critically acclaimed portrait photography project that explores the 

inspirational qualities of jazz recordings and the impact that they have on people’s lives. 

Each artist portrait features the subject holding a recording that is of fundamental importance to them. The photograph is accompanied by a short interview that explores the meaning and value of the selected album. 

Concept and development 

“One LP is a project that commenced in 2010 as a response to conversations with musicians about their relationship with the work of other artists encountered via recordings. In particular, conversations had focused on the albums that had profoundly moved the subjects. As a conversation is of course transient – usually committed only to memory - I was eager to find a format that would adequately document my interactions with the artists.  

The One LP series is the outcome - something that excavates layers of memory, influence, being and uniqueness.  

Perhaps more poetically, One LP has come to represent a 

journey into another’s soul: the album that each artist selects is a part of them: their past, present and future. 

The project, conceived in the jazz world has been extended and now includes around 200 people in a spectrum of occupations in the creative milieu - artists, academics, broadcasters, musicians, writers and photographers.” 

William Ellis 

Exhibitions 

The premiere One LP exhibition was held in New York at the ARChive of Contemporary Music in 2014. The portraits were subsequently shown in Los Angeles during the Britweek arts program. 

The exhibition at Birmingham City University is the most comprehensive to date and reflects the status of jazz as the most diverse of musical genres. 

The artists featured here range from innovators whose provenance reaches back to the birth of the jazz genre and moves through to those at the cutting edge of contemporary composition and performance. The exhibition also includes subjects whose passion for the music inspires them to excel in their respective fields: here we feature world famous jazz club and specialist record store owners, concert directors and record producers, promoters, agents, journalists, historians and photographers. 

One LP is a mature and ongoing project. However, initiatives to broaden its remit are welcomed. I am open to discourse on new collaborative assignments and projects in the UK and overseas 

. William Ellis 

British photographer William Ellis is perhaps best known for his impeccable photos of jazz musicians. Truly cool interactive exhibits like this that combine multiple art forms don’t come around often. Time Out New York 

About 

William Ellis was born in Liverpool in 1957. Developing his distinctive style encompassing portrait, performance and still life images of musical instruments via study and appreciation of a widerange of artists and fellow photographers. 

His breakthrough into jazz came with the opportunity to photograph Miles Davis in 1989. 

William has since worked with many of the world’s leading musicians. 

His work is exhibited extensively at international level: it is held in private collections worldwide and those of major institutions including the National Portrait Gallery London, the Archive of Contemporary Music in New York and the American Jazz Museum in Kansas City MO. William’s photographs have been used in the JAM (Jazz Appreciation Month) Outreach program in the United States initiated by the Smithsonian Institute. They also appear regularly in print/online publications, and are used by record companies in artist promotion. One LP is featured on the leading website allaboutjazz.com 

Commission One LP 

The OneLP Project is available as a bespoke art event and can be integrated into existing programmes or operated as a stand-alone event. The latter is usually based on an exhibition that can complemented with a range of optional activities, including for example, individual OneLP portrait and interview sessions, presentations, seminars, methodology and practitioner workshops, and discussions relating to technical aspects of portrait and music photography. 

Visit onelp.org/experience email info@william-ellis.com 

“Beautiful images.” - Herman Leonard 

“One LP is a marvellous idea, superbly executed. The range of subjects (human and musical) is wide indeed, often surprising, sometimes touching, always interesting. May it go on and on.” - Dan Morgenstern, Director Emeritus, Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, NEA Jazz Master 

  • {quote}Well, it's Charlie Parker on Dial and it's a particular Spotlite LP of those classic Dial records with, you know, 'Embraceable You' ... 'Scrapple from the Apple' and those immortal bebop things. And the point is that I actually remember going into a listening booth in a Hemel Hempstead record shop and hearing this stuff for the first time - back in the fourteenth century..... I wouldn't say I understood it or even enjoyed it - but I knew I'd just stumbled into Aladdins cave. I knew there was something there and I went and I bought a Charlie Parker LP on spec and I listened to it until it made sense, and that music has stayed with me and inspired with me ever since.{quote}Alex Webb: The Spa, Scarborough, 26th September 2015Charlie Parker: Charlie Parker on Dial  released 1970Spotlite RecordsAlex Webb
  • {quote}Well mine is a Louis Armstrong tape that I got from the charity shop just as I kind of started getting into jazz and doing the festivals.  I picked it up for about 20p I think and my car still has a tape player in it so I get to make the most of all these bargains.  And it's probably about 10 years ago now and this tape has stayed with us and played and played.Me and my husband used to play it a lot together and now we listen to it with our children now all the time.  And I think we did a journey the other week that was three hours and we listened to it straight the whole way - just all the way round and they never asked to take it off - so it was great!{quote}Hannah Lutkin: The Spa, Scarborough, 27th September 2015Louis Armstrong: Music For The MIllionsLouis Armstrong
  • {quote}Well the album is George Duke 'A Brazilian Love Affair'.  Now this album, it was amazing album when this was first released because if changed my perspective of everything.  It's a Latin based Brazilian style album and it just opened my eyes to that sort of music.  The musicianship on that album is amazing and listening to trombone players like Frank Rosolino, J.J. Johnson, Carl Fontana.  I was introduced to a trombone player called Roul De Souza, who played the valve trombone and it was the first time I've really heard the valve trombone and the solo was amazing - on the track - but the whole album was inspiring and that's all I can say.{quote}Winston Rollins: The Spa, Scarborough 26th September 2015George Duke: A Brazilian Love Affair  released 1979Winston Rollins
  • {quote}I bought this LP when I was a student in London, so that would be in the late 60's.  And when I went to college I took my record player and my vinyl and it played loud all down the corridor and all my mates at college thought it was the most awful stuff they'd ever heard in their entire life - but I've always loved close harmony singing and that's what this record is all about.  It's four wonderful male voices and five trombones and nothing else at all.  And for me it was the beginning of enjoying jazz and I still love it.{quote}Marian Gordon: The Spa, Scarborough, 27th September 2015Scarborough Jazz Festival
  • {quote}Yeah, it's Andrew Hills 'Point Of Departure'. And why it's special is because Andrew Hill, among many other greats really changed my world perspective on the music - the way it combined elements of ...  I guess you call it inside or traditional modern jazz with the freer elements that were happening at that time you know. And that combination of players - Eric Dolphy, Joe Henderson , Kenny Dorham, Richard Davis, Tony Williams - it's like, sort of, my dream band for being inside and outside at the same time. So, yeah it kind of revolutionised my conceptual (view of) what was possible.That band in particular kind of idealized for me what I thought New York was about - marrying all of those elements so I  - when I got to New York - I thought 'oh wow it's great anybody can do everything all at once' you know.  So I even formed a band sort of around that idea. A band called 'Violet Hour' which had a lot of great players kind of in and out all at the same time.  So over all of these years since first discovering it - it's still a super important conceptual landmark for me.{quote}Gerald Cleaver, The Spa Scarborough, 27th September 2015Andrew Hill: Point Of Departure released 1965Gerald Cleaver
  • {quote}It's Oliver Nelson’s 'Blues And The Abstract Truth’. I love it mainly because the music is so wonderful but also because they take the two basic elements of Jazz which is the blues - and I got rhythm, and Nelson's writing is so magnificent it kind of transforms these very basic forms and the quality of the musicians he employs on there - Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, Bill Evans - they're just so superb they bring to the music a life and a vigour that's life affirming and really rather wonderful.{quote}Alan Ross: The Spa Scarborough, 27th September 2015Olive Nelson: The Blues and the Abstract Truth released 1961Jazz House Records, Leicester
  • {quote}This was one of my first favourite records. It goes back to my army days and National Service when there was a guitarist I knew who loved it and played it all the time.  Then when I was a student and worked at Butlins I shared a chalet with six Irish students  It was wild and you never knew who was going to be back there at night but when you went in and you put the light on Ella and Louis filled the air.  One guy had attached the record player to the light! Very romantic!  I can hear the first two notes of anything on that CD and know which tune is coming up.  It’s not Louis’ greatest trumpet playing but Ella and the Oscar Peterson Trio are fantastic.{quote}Mike Gordon:The Spa Scarborough, 26th September, 2010Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong : Ella and Louis released 1956Scarborough Jazz Festival
  • Bob Koester talks about Hoodoo Man Blues, his life in music, the ins and outs of running the longest established independent American jazz and blues label.BK:	That’s paradise.  It’s freezing. We had a lot of snow a couple of days ago.WE:	I was here actually. I got in on Sunday night from Los Angeles…BK:	Oh I see. So you saw a little bit.WE:	..and it was chucking it down when I landed.BK:	Maybe the last of the year [knocking sound]. That’s not wood though, that’s plastic, so that doesn’t count.WE:	That’s wood.BK:	Good to have a wood desk, that’s true.WE:	I love all these as well. These are amazing. (rare 78s)BK:	That’s a bunch of stuff we just bought. We keep them naked until a couple of regular customers see it so they know that there are new arrivals.WE:	To check the condition.BK:	Sure.WE:	How long has this shop been here, Bob?BK:	I’ve been here for 10 years.  I was upstairs for 5 years.  I was a block and a half away from 1962 and I have been in the business 61 years.WE:	Wow.  BK:	I started in St Louis. Actually a little before I had a shop, I sold records out of my dormitory room at St Louis University for a year, mostly by mail. And then we opened a store, me and a friend.  My friend collected Ellington and Billie Holliday and didn’t like any other jazz. He liked sweet bands so we only had to fight over two artists’ records.WE:	Which jazz do you prefer, Bob?BK:	Well, I like everything from early New Orleans jazz up through swing. Bebop I can understand now. The avant-garde, I record a lot of avant-garde on Delmark but it’s not my favourite music and I can’t say I understand it all but jazz changes over the years. As it goes from place to place it changes. Even in the traditional jazz era there was Chicago style, New Orleans style. Almost every major city had its own style of trad. I call it trad, I don’t like the word Dixieland. It’s basically…it’s seems vaguely racist somehow, I don’t know. Maybe a putdown, you know. But the south has done a better job of recovering from segregation than some major cities in the north so Dixie is not so bad maybe anymore. The record you have photographed – Hoodoo Man Blues by Junior Wells – was, well, I started recording blues back in St Louis in early ‘60s and we’re best known as a blues label. We have a little over 500 titles in our catalogue and a little less than half of them are blues – around 225 blues records.  Bunch of trad. Bunch of modern. A few big band records.  Quite a bit of avant-garde lately.  The Hoodoo Man Blues was the first time a Chicago Blues Band went in the studio to make an LP, to not be confined to 2 minutes and 45 seconds or 3 minutes and 45 and I didn’t even realise that until about 20 years ago that we had a first, I have to say, Chicago working blues band because Muddy Waters did a few LPs with studio groups prior to that. There might have been some others that I can’t think of right now. It has been a major seller for Delmark. It won a Grammy as a classic blues record. Memphis Blues Organisation gave it an award. Quite a lot of good reviews. Sold…I don’t really know I think we’re approaching a third of a million, maybe half a million since 1965.  That’s 40, almost 50 years. More than 50 years. Like the year before last, we sold 2000 LPs and 4000 CDs but that was a little more than usual. Usually, it’s 4 and a half, or 5 thousand but that year we did an expanded CD version of it, and raised the price a little bit.  That’s about all I can say is that I can’t take much credit for how good it is because I just watched while Junior Wells produced it. It’s got Buddy Guy on it, by the way, who was Junior’s guitar player at the time although he had made records on his own. But that’s not unusual for sidemen in bands to have records on their own. And the story I sometime like to tell is Buddy didn’t wanted to ruin a little relationship he had with Leonard Chess at Chess Records so he said “maybe I should call Chess and see if it’s ok for him to be on the record”.  Chess said [imitates voice] “OK. But he does his thing and you don’t use his motherfucking name” or maybe “the motherfucker better sing but don’t use his name”. So the first 7000 copies which covers the first 4 or 5 years, he is referred to… Well, there was a British chap working for me. A British guy, I should say, working for me.  And I said, “what’s a good pseudonym for Buddy Guy?”. I thought I’d let him come up with a pseudonym and he said [British accent] “Well, a buddy is a friend and a guy is a chap so why don’t you call him Friendly Chap”, which we did.  His name was Peter Brown. He later put out some reissued records in Englend, when he went back to England.  Worked for me for a year or two, I think.  Good man. Really good man. In fact, we had three Brits in a row, one of whom was somehow in the royalty. They had some deal over here where they didn’t have to pay income tax for a year and they took full advantage of that. Wait a minute, was there another one? Yes. Another guy. Man, I had a stroke 8 years ago and I fucked up my memory. He’s an active musician in New Orleans. Oh no, he’s from Sweden! But we’ve had several guys from other countries work here.  So Junior was not as well-known then. He was known to blues collectors but in 1965 most of the interest in blues was in country blues. It started in New York where they didn’t have very many blues artists. They had Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry. They had Lead Belly until he died. They had Reverend [Gary] Davis, who was a street-singing gospeller, and they had Champion Jack Dupree, a piano player, and that was about the whole blues scene they had there. Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry dominated and most of the criticism and most of the writing about music did not pay much attention to blues. A few enlightened, mostly traditional jazz people, were into blues and people like Hugues Panassié were into blues in the late ‘30s and between Panassié and the British just about everybody I recorded, and anybody you can name, went to England. Chris Barber had a lot to do with that. He would take a blues artist and tour him in England for a month and several of the guys he pulled over there, piano players, Jack Dupree and Eddie Boyd and I can’t think who else right now but several of them moved to Europe. They couldn’t move to England because it’s very hard for musicians to move there from any other country but Chris deserves a lot of credit for that blues revival. He was bringing blues artists over, I think, just about as soon as he split from the guy whose band he was with. I forget the other guy’s name, but he was a member of the band and the whole band pulled away.Anyway, there was this relationship between traditional jazz bands and blues and it gradually built up. In the early ‘60s, there was a big rock thing here. I’m sorry, not rock, folk music and Peter Seeger had all kinds of groups, some of them pretty terrible. Groups of more than two people tended to be pretty showbizzy but that developed an interest in blues on the part of a lot of young Americans. They could go from Peter Seeger to Brownie McGhee to Big Bill Broonzy and once it got to Broonzy they were in the Chicago thing because he was the king of the Chicago blues back in the ‘30s and ‘40s. Then pretty soon, it was like Muddy Waters. Well, Muddy would bring his band to gigs and well, we don’t want the band we want just Buddy and a harmonica player, you know, but they got the band and until Dylan used a blues band in one of his appearances at Newport and they put him down for that.  It was a white blues band, the Paul Butterfield Band with Mike Bloomfield. They put him down for that. It’s sort of interesting when Muddy Waters first went to Europe the Europeans hadn’t quite got into the city blues bands to the extent that they did pretty quickly. But Muddy went to Europe and he played acoustic guitar. He didn’t like it but that’s what they wanted. Then the next year he went over and he had a nice acoustic guitar instead of borrowing one which he did the first time and they said “Where’s the band?”. They had changed that much in one year.WE:	I guess it’s kind of the whole, like the Yardbirds, John Mayall, the British bands.BK:	All that came out of…the Beatles started…Well, there’s a thing. Chris Barber in between sets would switch from trombone to bass. The drummer would switch to washboard and the guitar player, who had a major hit here and you know his name better than I do because I can’t recall it, would play guitar and they would do blues and call it skiffle. And as you probably already know, the Beatles began as a skiffle band, influenced by Chris Barber. Chris would do that between sets at gigs and concerts and then he would bring on the blues artists and then they would play with the blues artists. Chris had a hit over here and doesn’t play trombone on it, he plays bass. And I can’t exactly remember his name now. Very embarrassed, because he had a bigger hit.Bob Koester: Jazz Record Mart, Chicago, April 2014Junior Wells: Hoodoo Man Blues, released 1965Junior Wellls performs Hoodoo Man BluesBob Koester: Founder and record producer, DelmarkJazz Record Mart - the world's largest jazz and blues record store.
  • {quote}It’s an album called The Brandeis Jazz Festival. It’s really not recorded live, it’s studio recordings. But they’re all birth of the third stream. There’s a piece by Milton Babbitt, Harold Shapiro, Charles Mingus, and there’s an extended suite by George Russell.  In the middle of it, Bill Evans takes this breathtaking solo. For those who kind of poo-poo Evans for being this romantic narcissist, or whatever... I love Bill, so that’s not my view of him. But when you speak to a lot of people who are interested in a different style of piano playing, they don’t get Bill. For those who don’t get Bill and think of him as only playing in this meditative, quiet way and every so often he gets into uptempo stuff, they should hear this solo that he does on ‘All About Rosie’. It’ll just blow you away. Russell gives him a long, long solo. The sound of the band and their approach... They’re just in your face all the time. And you just sit there and say ‘this is marvellous’. It’s one of those things.A lot of jazz is good but it’s not marvellous. Of course it’s all a matter of personal taste. But you hear that and you’re sitting there and you’re wondering, ‘Jeez, how’s this thing gonna get any better than this?’ and then it gets better. So, since we live in the moment, that’ll be my choice. Now, do I have it?  That’s a whole different story...{quote} (Laughs)Fred Cohen: New York Jazz Record Center: February, 2014Gunther Schuller - George Russell: Modern Jazz Concert - Birth of The Third StreamJazz Record Centre, New York City
  • {quote}One LP - absolutely Oscar Peterson. He was a very dear friend of mine. He played for us at Birdland on a number of occasions. We became very close and I visited him manytimes at his home at Mississauga in Toronto. And one visit, we were in his studio and he said, ‘I wanna play you a disc.’ So we went into his little room and he had a wall of discs. He actually had recorded perhaps 250 discs, whether they were just a trio or with others. And he always kept a copy, a beautiful library. And he pulled one out and started playing it and he said, ‘What do you think?’ And I said, ‘Nat sounds great.’ It was a Nat King Cole song. And he said, ‘That’s not Nat.’ And I said, ‘Well, who is it?’ He said, ‘That’s me.’ And I says, ‘You’re kidding me.’ And he says, ‘No, this is an album I did after Nat passed away, With Respect To Nat, in 1965, on Verve Records.’ With his trio, with Herbie Ellis, Ray Brown and of course Old P at the piano. And the album is fascinating for me because I get to hear him not only as genius at the keyboard but hear him sing. And when you hear this album, you have to say, ‘That can’t be Oscar Peterson singing.’ You think it’s Nat King Cole. His voice and Nat’s were so similar. And he told me the story behind it, why he did that album. There was a running thing that the two of ‘em had. Cos Nat was an excellent piano player. Whenever Nat would show up at one of Oscar’s gigs, he would invite him up to play and Nat would go wild at the piano. And then Oscar would get up and he would play and he would sing. So one day after the gig, he told Nat, he said, ‘Let’s make a deal. You stop playing the piano that way and I’ll stop singing this way.’ That was it. So they were brothers, they loved each other dearly. And unfortunately when Nat passed away, Oscar was really taken aback. He was hurt to lose a friend like Nat. And this was a way to pay his respects to one of his dear friends, and of course the album is titled With Respect To Nat. And to this day, like I said, to hear Old P singing and playing at the same time, I couldn’t have chosen a more loving and dear album to me.{quote}Gianni Valenti: Birdland, New York City, 2nd April 2014Oscar Peterson Trio: With Respect To Nat released 1965Birdland
  • {quote}I picked The Ramones debut record. I stumbled upon it later in my life - maybe around 30 - as opposed to so many people who come across punk rock and rock 'n' roll so much earlier. That album to me just summed it all up and I thought it so applicable to any other genres in terms of integrity - I find it so interesting how many people in other genres go to that album - and that band as a definition of individuality, personality - groundbreaking.I just think that any great movement or genre has someone who has a different voice that they remain true to.{quote}Marco Olivari: Blue Note, New York, 10th February, 2014The Ramones: Ramones released 1976Blue Note: New York
  • Ronnie Scott’s is one of the world’s most famous, renowned and respected music venues. This massively talented music booking team at the sharp-end of programming the iconic club are, of course, dedicated to the music, and to the business of building on a unique heritage and brand that dates back to the year that Miles Davis released ‘Kind of Blue’.Though their roles are diverse, James, Nick, Paul, Sarah and Simon have one big thing in common – a deep passion for music. Each has shared a favourite recording as their ‘One LP’.  In the image and text, they offer an insight into an album that they love, and share with us something of what inspires them to do what they do.Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club
  • {quote}This album is by Gregg Diamond and the Bionic Boogie.  I picked it specifically just for the one song ‘Hot Butterfly’.  I remember when I first heard the song; I thought it was such a fantastic song, so it’s really just that song that I love.  Looking at the album it’s just a classic of the late 70’s lack of modesty but the song has Luther Vandross singing it.  There’s no one really that beats his vocals in the soul world.  It’s just good disco at its prime.{quote}Sarah Weller: Ronnie Scott's, London, 5th February 2015Greg Diamond: Bionic Boogie released 1977Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club
  • The album is ‘Atomic Mr Basie’; count Basie and his orchestra.  All the arrangements were done by Neal Hefti and it’s one of the most explosive albums.  It sums up Count Basie; it sums up the Atomic style.{quote}The album's recorded in an amazing way, the original one I’ve got here, if you turn the right speaker you get to hear the rhythm section and if you turn the other speaker you just get to hear the band.  So you can really get inside it. Count Basie himself playing on this, Kid from Red Bank, is one of the most brilliant pieces and the arrangements are stunning.  It’s a great jazz album.{quote}James Pearson: Ronnie Scott's, London, 5th February 2015Count Basie: The Atomic Mr. Basie  released 1958
  • Full title - The Night Has A Thousand Eyes{quote}Well, it’s a recording of Ronnie and Sonny Stitt that was done in 1965 in the old place in Gerrard Street. And it was a spontaneous union. They were having quite an argument in the office at the back of the club prior to Sonny going onstage. It was a musical dispute. And it was time for Sonny to go on the stand, so he turned around to Ronnie and said, ‘You wanna take it on the bandstand?’ And Ronnie said, ‘Absolutely!’ And the two of them stormed onto the bandstand and what ensued after that was one of the most electrifying evenings that any of us had heard probably ever, because of course they were nuts mad at each other and they were trying to outdo the other and it was amazing. The whole evening was absolutely incredible. And the irony is none of us realised it was being recorded, we were so wrapped up in the music. And I remember saying to Ronnie afterwards, ‘If ever there was a night that should have been recorded, this was it! It’s an absolute sin that this...(laughs)...isn’t there for people to listen to. ‘ And we were lucky. It was recorded. And it was a memorable evening that I don’t think anyone who was there will ever forget. And the other extraordinary thing is that when this was released, actually after Ronnie had passed away, cos of course the 50 years thing had gone by... But Valerie Wilmer was there that night and she took the photograph that was...is...on the cover of the CD. It never was an LP cos it wasn’t released during the time when it would have been an LP. And the picture is completely remarkable because she captured Ronnie playing some quite exquisite changes and Sonny Stitt looking at his fingering and looking completely mystified and perturbed which was such a wonderful summary of what actually was happening that night.So that’s... It’s my favourite CD. Clearly, I was mesmerised when it came out and very grateful that it had been recorded.{quote}Mary Scott: Hotel Pennsylvania, New York Cit, 3rd April 2014Ronnie Scott and Sonny Stitt: The Night Has A Thousand Eyes recorded at Ronnie Scott's, Gerrard StreetReleased 1997 Mary Scott Global Music
  • {quote}Back in the 1970s there was a record store near my home. One day I saw a copy of the four-Lp box set The Fletcher Henderson Story – A Study In Frustration. I was so excited that I literally ran home to get the money to buy it. It has since been reissued as a three-CD set. It's 64 recordings, dating from 1923-38, feature the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra at its best. Nearly every major young African-American jazz musician of that era was part of the band at one time or another including Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins (he was with Henderson for ten years), Benny Carter, Red Allen, Roy Eldridge and countless others. The music - by what was really the first swing big band is quite exciting, especially the recordings from 1925-29, and this has long been a real favorite of mine.{quote}Scott Yanow: Kirk Douglas Theatre, Culver City CA. 28th March 2015Fletcher Henderson: A Study In Frustration  recorded 1923 to 1938 released 1961Scott Yanow
  • {quote}You know, when we were teenagers, the jazz guys seemed to us to be the real rebels. To me, folk singers and protest singers weren’t tagged to the streets like a black jazz artist whose very livelihood if not health was on the line. In New York, you lose your cabaret card, not work, you’re a junkie, you could sink even lower than you were. To me, there was kind of a heroism that fought against the racism of the general society and got expressed in a music that was as beautiful as it was spiky and ugly sometimes. So by the time Ornette Coleman comes around, he was following the bebop era which was ornate and elaborate. Ornette Coleman comes along and he’s taking jazz through modern, modal scales, back to an elemental feeling that you’d say is more connected to the blues. So, in a way, even though he’s a supreme modernist, he’s echoing something as early as Louis Armstrong in its simplicity. And also, he disposed of traditional harmony, as articulated bypianos and guitars, and let this horn float naked in front of just drums, bass and – in this case – trumpet, Don Cherry. It put a lot of heat on the soloist; your line had to flow, he had to keep an interest going that didn’t have to do with the harmonic undergirding and all that interchange harmonically that goes on. So it felt naked, it felt raw. And yet a melody like ‘Lonely Woman’ on this... The purists were probably shocked by it because of its kind of ugly beauty, its twisted grace. To me, it was... It had – what do they call it in philosophy – an objective correlative, it actually correlated to a human experience. If you listen to bebop, you hear a little anger and frustration but this was reeking of expression. And, to me, although this is the great dichotomy in jazz, the horn players wanna sound like the human voice, the alto sax being in the range of a female’s voice. And the funny thing is, a great jazz singer like Billie Holiday or Sarah Vaughan wanted to sound like the horns! So when they work together... I almost chose Sarah Vaughan’s No Count Sarah.(1958). It’s a record of hers without Count Basie but using his band, just swinging, and - as artistic as it is - just down and dirty, which finally is what attracted us as kids to jazz. It had this dignity of these underclass warriors who’d survived everything they’d faced. And yet it sounded like they were dedicated to something higher than just screaming through the horn. They found beauty in the jungle somewhere.{quote} David Was: Amoeba Music, Los Angeles, 10th April 2014Ornette Coleman: The Shape Of Jazz To Come released 1959David Was
  • {quote}When I had to leave my old collection of LPs in an attic it was the one I wanted to hear first. The tune is called {quote}Simply Sweets.{quote} The musicians are Harry Sweets Edison on trumpet, Dolo Coker on Electric piano, joined by electric bassist Harvey Newmark half way through. It was recorded in 1977. The composer credit is jointly shared between Edison and Coker - which suggests that it was probably cooked up on the spot - It has that feel of a gap-filler at the end of an LP side, I imagine it was done in one take, but it's a track I've always found captivating. It's the smear at the end of Harry Edison's phrase which I can't get out of my head. I guess it's what you call an earworm or what Oliver Sacks calls invioluntary musical imagery (INMI) Harry Edison was  born in 1915,he was in the Basie band from 1937 to 1950 - and in later lifelived in the studios of Hollywood. He was part of Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmpnic -died in 1999. Sweets worked in partnership with other players, there are some great records with Ben Webster, and I remember he used to tour with Eddie Lockjaw Davis. The muscular tenor, and the laid back statesmanlike role were nicely contrasted. Dolo Coker was born in 1927 in Hartford Connecticut and died in 1983. Real name was charles, Dolo was a {quote}regional dance{quote}  - I've read that Dolo Coker was brilliant dancer in his youthThe Penguin Guide describes the tracks of this session as {quote}lacklustre.{quote} and give it a grudging two - and - a half stars. That's fine by me. These 72 bars of magic are for my desert island.{quote}Sebastian Scotney: King's Place, London, 30th April 2014Harry {quote}Sweets{quote} Edison: The Best of Harry Edison released 1980Sebastian Scotney: Founder and editor London Jazz News
  • {quote}I have always loved Gil Evans' music, especially the way his arrangements provide a wonderful setting for soloists. I could have chosen one of the albums with Miles Davis, but I love the particular arrangements on this album. While I like the free-er end of the jazz spectrum, I also enjoy music for a larger ensemble with structure and the stunning texture we hear on this album.{quote}Tony Dudley-Evans: Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 12th January 2016Gil Evans: The Individualism of Gil Evans released 1964
  • {quote}Well, it’s Dave Brubeck’s Time Out album and I remember hearing it in the… was it the late ‘50s, early 60s? – I’m not even sure now – but it was in that period and I remember how the time changes and it was just one of the most amazing things I ever heard.  I had never heard music played like that.I was amazed.  I remember hearing  “Strange Meadow Lark” which was one of the other tunes on there – there was “Take Five”, “Blue Rondo à la Turk” and a number of others but “Strange Meadow Lark” just profoundly struck me.  It was like one of those songs that you remember for the rest of your life and it makes you feel something that you were feeling, in my case, maybe 50 years ago… or more.  I just loved it.  I just loved it.  It was a changer for me – it was an earth changer in terms of my feeling about music.  I’ve always loved it; I’m a big fan of Brubeck’s and I actually met the bass player Eugene Wright not too long ago and we talked about the album.  It’s just a great album.  It was like a pivotal point in American music, for me.In those days you didn’t say “hip” you said “hep”.  Haha.  Yeah.  The Brubeck album was like the coolest thing I had ever heard in my life.  It was just so way ahead of its time.  I’d never heard any sounds like that before ever in my life.  It just put a hook in me and I was a believer – I was a total believer.{quote}Bob Barry: At home, Hollywood CA, May 2013Dave Brubeck: Time Out 1959 Bob Barry
  • {quote}Kansas City Shout featuring Big Joe Turner, Eddie 'Cleanhead' Vinson and Count Basie with orchestra rounding it all out, how can you go wrong? It has all your basic food groups…blues, jazz, swing, R&B and it rocks! And what makes it even more special is that it was pressed in translucent red vinyl! I never get tired of listening to this album.{quote}Don Saban: El Capitan Theatre, Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, Los Angeles CA, May 2013Count Basie: Kansas City Shout 1980Don Saban
  • {quote}Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Hymnen that was composed in about 1966/67.  It’s a German import pressing of that album.WE:	What’s the thing about it that’s made it outstanding for you?EC:	Well, it’s avant-garde electronic composition which has been some of the music I have liked ever since I was a teenager.  I heard his music and John Cage and some other contemporary classical composers in the late ‘60s and it totally changed my life and I kind of pursued that genre type of music ever since then.{quote}Edward Colver: At home, Highland Park, Los Angeles CA, 6th May, 2013Karlheinz Stockhausen: Hymnen composed 1966-67Edward Colver
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