The year passes, as do a pair of jazz legends

In the past two weeks, jazz — and music in general — lost a pair of elder statesmen that will be truly missed. Legendary producer Joel Dorn (b. 1942), who spent years at Atlantic Records and is perhaps best known for his collaborations with reed man Rahsaan Roland Kirk, passed away on Dec. 17. And jazz pianist Oscar Peterson (b. 1925), one of the last living masters from jazz’s golden ages, passed on Sunday. Next to Monk, I don’t know if there are any pianists I love more than Peterson. You can read recent items on Dorn here and here, and on Peterson here and here. Also passing earlier in the year was Max Roach (b. 1924), quite possibly the greatest jazz drummer who ever lived. Read about Roach here and here.

[Update: You can find another good write-up on Joel Dorn here.] 

Update: live music archives online, JFJO show

Had the chance to witness an incredible performance last night by the highly atypical piano jazz trio Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey in Norman. (You can read a brief preview of the show here.) The show was part of the 2007 fall Groovefest and was scheduled to be held outside in a park. But due to the threat of a lightning storm, it was moved inside to a small, hole-in-the-wall venue called the Deli. The energy was perfect, and the band absolutely tore it up.

The band recently took on a new, younger drummer, and the energy he brings is indispensible. If you’ve heard JFJO before, you know their music can be both electric and acoustic and can range from the avant-garde to more traditonal jazz by the likes of Ellington, Monk, and Mingus. But last night, in an all-electric show, they also brought the funk — even more so than usual — and they applied the punk aesthetic to a jazz trio in a way I’ve seldom heard before.

Needless to say, this morning I’ve been trying to find some live JFJO performances online that bear resemblance to the marvelous spectacle I observed last night. Of course, I checked out the Live Music Archive that I blogged about previously. But I also found some good stuff at nugs.net, and found some tracks that are quite similar to the ones I heard last night.

While I was at it, I browsed around the nugs site to check out what else is available from other artists. It appears that nugs serves as a clearing house of sorts, where interested persons can see what live digital recordings are out there, somewhere, online for, say, Phish, Widespread Panic, JFJO, or some other outfit that could potentially be labeled as a “jam band”. I guess, since tape trading became a popular thing initially among Grateful Dead fans, it only makes sense that most live digital music would be centered around the jam band scene.

And sure enough, another good place to find live digital downloads is at the website of the Bonnaroo festival — an annual event in Tennessee that began a few years ago to give all the jam bands and their fans a place to congregate and “freak out”. Also, if you’re a fan of Warren Haynes and Gov’t Mule, it looks like you can find some good stuff at this site, too.

I should point out that you have to pay for most of the downloads at the nugs and Bonnaroo sites (though nugs does have a “free stash“), while the downloads at the Live Music Archive are free. I don’t know if the quality of the pay-for shows are, on average, better than the free ones. But either way, there seems to be some good stuff out there.

And finally, here are links to some killer JFJO shows similar to last night’s; sound quality may vary. Some of the songs the band played last night were “Oklahoma Stomp”, “Dove’s Army of Love”, “Santiago”, and the closer, a cover of “Happiness is a Warm Gun”. Outstanding.

[Update: Just found a good article on another recent JFJO show that elaborates a little more on some of the aforementioned songs and states, quite rightly, that the fellas of JFJO are "on top of their game".]

Impulse! Web site

Today, I browsed around a little bit on the Web site of Impulse! Records, one of the premiere labels in the history of jazz, and one that specialized, at least during much of the 1960s, in somewhat “free” or “avant garde” jazz. Must say, I like their site! They don’t always have the most complete info on the records themselves (not even song lengths), but they have some good bios on the individual artists, a decent little synopsis of the label’s history, and overall the site is pretty attractive.

For those unfamiliar, Impulse! served as the home label for John Coltrane following his departure from Atlantic Records in the early ’60s. It was Impulse! that issued what’s widely regarded as Trane’s landmark achievement, the album A Love Supreme.

Trane served as Impulse!’s headliner until his death in ‘67, and a number of similar artists — many of whom worked under Trane at one time or another — called the label home during that decade, including McCoy Tyner, Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane and Archie Shepp, among others. Impulse! also issued a few releases from cats like Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins and Yusef Lateef. It’s now a part of the Verve Music Group.

Also, the folks in charge of the Impulse! site have done a good job of synching up with The Traneumentary — which, if you haven’t checked out yet, please do, pronto. It’s a podcast featuring exclusive interviews in which individuals who either played with Trane, worked with him, studied him or followed in his footsteps offer recollections and insight about the man and his music. (It’s also my favorite podcast, in case you hadn’t already guessed.)

First Post: WordPress, Coltrane, etc.

Thanks to my good friend, Chris, for getting me started on my first WordPress blog. A few days ago, when I initially viewed the WordPress sites and a few sample WordPress blogs, I was so struck by their high aesthetic quality that I had what some might refer to as a “moment of Zen”. Having just spent the previous two weeks tinkering with Blogger, this was quite a change, indeed.

As I write this, I’m reminded of a conversation with Chris and I’s mutual good friend, E.J., with whom (along with our wives) I’d just seen the film Sunshine. E.J. and I were discussing a scene near the end of the film in which one of the main characters has his own “moment of Zen”, so to speak. As we veered onto the topic of such moments, E.J. asked if I’d ever had any of my own. I paused, and then recounted that yes, as a matter of fact, I had recently experienced a Zen-like moment — or closer to 10 minutes, actually — while listening to John Coltrane’s spellbinding rendition of “Afro-Blue” from the album Live at Birdland.

The entire album is truly one of my favorites, featuring Trane’s legendary quartet of McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass, and the seismic Elvin Jones on drums. But it is that opening number that truly takes my breath away. More so, even, than the first time I learned about WordPress.