Monday, August 6, 2018

Charles Earland & Odyssey - Revelation

Styles: Piano, Clarinet Jazz
Year: 1977
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 38:36
Size: 88,7 MB
Art: Front

(5:30)  1. Betty Boop
(6:49)  2. Ode To Chicken George
(6:45)  3. Revelation
(4:10)  4. Shining Bright
(4:42)  5. Singing A Song For You
(7:44)  6. Elizabeth
(2:53)  7. I Wish

Charles Earland came into his own at the tail-end of the great 1960s wave of soul-jazz organists, gaining a large following and much airplay with a series of albums for the Prestige label. While heavily indebted to Jimmy Smith and Jimmy McGriff, Earland came armed with his own swinging, technically agile, light-textured sound on the keyboard and one of the best walking-bass pedal techniques in the business. Though not an innovative player in his field, Earland burned with the best of them when he was on. Earland actually started his musical experiences surreptitiously on his father's alto sax as a kid, and when he was in high school, he played baritone in a band that also featured fellow Philadelphians Pat Martino on guitar, Lew Tabackin on tenor, and yes, Frankie Avalon on trumpet. After playing in the Temple University band, he toured as a tenor player with McGriff for three years, became infatuated with McGriff's organ playing, and started learning the Hammond B-3 at intermission breaks. When McGriff let him go, Earland switched to the organ permanently, forming a trio with Martino and drummer Bobby Durham. He made his first recordings for Choice in 1966, then joined Lou Donaldson for two years (1968-1969) and two albums before being signed as a solo artist to Prestige. Earland's first album for Prestige, Black Talk!, became a best-selling classic of the soul-jazz genre; a surprisingly effective cover of the Spiral Starecase's pop/rock hit "More Today Than Yesterday" from that LP received saturation airplay on jazz radio in 1969. He recorded eight more albums for Prestige, one of which featured a young unknown Philadelphian named Grover Washington, Jr., then switched to Muse before landing contracts with Mercury and Columbia. 

By this time, the organ trio genre had gone into eclipse, and in the spirit of the times, Earland acquired some synthesizers and converted to pop/disco in collaboration with his wife, singer/songwriter Sheryl Kendrick. Kendrick's death from sickle-cell anemia in 1985 left Earland desolate, and he stopped playing for awhile, but a gig at the Chickrick House on Chicago's South Side in the late '80s brought him out of his grief and back to the Hammond B-3. Two excellent albums in the old soul-jazz groove for Milestone followed, and the '90s found him returning to the Muse label. Earland died of heart failure on December 11, 1999, the morning after playing a gig in Kansas City; he was 58.~ Richard S.Ginell https://www.allmusic.com/artist/charles-earland-mn0000204850/biography

Personnel:  Organ, Electric Piano, Synthesizer [Arp String Synthesizer], Clavinet, Piano – Charles Earland  Tenor Saxophone, Bass Clarinet – Arthur Grant;   Trumpet – Randy Brecker;  Bass – Paul Jackson;   Drums – Harvey Mason;  Guitar – Eric Gale;    

Revelation

Caroline Henderson - Metamorphing

Styles: Vocal
Year: 1998
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 51:29
Size: 119,0 MB
Art: Front

(0:25)  1. Waves
(4:28)  2. This Is Who I Am
(5:02)  3. Gone
(4:31)  4. Faster
(5:06)  5. Dive
(4:17)  6. Right now
(4:48)  7. Forgiveness Time
(0:19)  8. Little Tasha
(3:56)  9. Without Me
(0:10) 10. O'si Ndiyamba
(5:00) 11. Dinosaur
(5:17) 12. Luna
(4:11) 13. Metamorphing
(3:51) 14. I Am To

A jazz and pop vocalist born in Stockholm, Sweden, on February 28, 1962, Caroline Henderson would move to Copenhagen in 1983 and become one of Denmark's top talents. Her first taste of fame and fortune in her new home came about in 1989, as part of the group RayDeeOh, with Maria Bramsen. That group soon came to an end, and Henderson was left to fend for herself. In 1995 she released the first of many albums, Cinemataztic, and began to work in television and film, as well as acting in plays. Her follow-up full-length, Metamorphing, hit stores in 1998, and was followed over the next ten years by five more albums, all of which (Dolores J in 2000, NAOS in 2002, Don't Explain in 2003, Made in Europe in 2004, and Love or Nothin' in 2007) built upon the success of their predecessors. In March of 2008 Henderson released album number eight, No. 8, which was a Top Five hit in Denmark. Apart from her commercial successes, Henderson also won Denmark's Grammy for Best Vocal Recording in 2007 for her work on the album Love or Nothin'. ~ Chris True https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/metamorphing/301648331

Metamorphing

Grant Green - Funk in France: From Paris to Antibes (1969-1970) Disc 1 And Disc 2

Album: Funk in France: From Paris to Antibes (1969-1970) Disc 1

Styles: Guitar Jazz 
Year: 2018
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 56:39
Size: 130,4 MB
Art: Front

( 4:34)  1. I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door I'll Get It Myself)
( 4:24)  2. Oleo
( 7:19)  3. How Insensitive (Insensatez)
( 8:07)  4. Untitled Blues
( 7:00)  5. Sonnymoon for Two
( 7:08)  6. I Wish You Love
(18:04)  7. Upshot

Now recognised as one of the presiding prodigies of guitar jazz, Grant Green died in 1979 having narrowly missed out on the sort of bigtime success enjoyed by the likes of Wes Montgomery and, especially, George Benson ironically Green was scheduled to play a gig at George Benson’s club in Harlem when he was finally felled by a heart attack. He was 43 years old, and his reputation was soon in eclipse. Indeed Sharony Andrews Green’s biography is subtitled Rediscovering the Forgotten Genius of Jazz Guitar.  Well, the rediscovery of Grant Green is fully under way, thanks to his music being embraced and redeployed first by Acid Jazz performers, then hip hop artists, not to mention devotees of funk. More importantly, there is a growing recognition of the true stature of his recordings such as the 1963 classic Idle Moments on Blue Note. And now Resonance Records has continued its campaign of unearthing classic lost performances with a flood of Grant Green collector’s items.  Released on vinyl as a Record Store Day special, Funk in France comes in a staggeringly lavish double gatefold cover which opens up to reveal two albums, consisting of three discs all told The Round House comprises a single disc and you could call it both a live album and a studio album it was recorded live, but in ideal acoustic conditions in a studio at La Maison de la Radio, the headquarters of the ORTF (the French Office of Radio and Television) in Paris on 26 October 1969. Then there is Haute Funk, a double album, also live, preserving an Antibes Jazz Festival performance on 18 July 1970. The Paris set opens with a title that almost consumes the word count for this review: I Don’t Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door I’ll Get it Myself). The fact that this is a James Brown track clearly announces Grant Green’s intention to move funk-wards. It’s dark, edgy and searching with Green playing percussively. 

Larry Ridley’s bass writhes and wraps around the guitar lines like ivy on a tree branch. Sonny Rollins’ tune Oleo is delivered in a hip, open, breezy rendition with Green creating colours and highlights as if he’s shearing glistening fragments off a block of ice.  But the set really begins to cook with Tom Jobim’s Insensatez, introduced by the excited stopwatch ticking of Don Lamond’s drums and underpinned by, then interwoven with, Ridley’s bass. Green’s exploration of the song is plangent and (appropriately enough) resonant. The relaxed and funky Untitled Blues is followed by another high point, Charles Trenet’s I Wish You Love, for which Barney Kessel joins the trio. The duelling guitars are an occasion for sharply clipped playing that paradoxically gives rise to a fat warm sound, with a killer sense of laidback timing, playing elastically behind the beat in a way that makes the listener feel the cares of the day simply drop away. The guitarists explore the tune almost pianistically, giving it unexpected stature and profundity.  Haute Funk is very different, It consists of four long tracks, each allocated the entire side of an LP. On Upshot (the first of two versions here) Green takes a headlong plunge into Montgomery-style soul jazz. One might expect Clarence Palmer’s organ to similarly hue close to Jimmy Smith, but on the contrary his sound is much more brooding, menacing and modernistic.

However, it’s difficult to draw too many conclusions about the supporting musicians. The crystal clarity of the Paris radio studio recording is gone here and the rest of the band often seems to be recessed behind the dominant sound of Green’s guitar. Nevertheless, the different line up, with Claude Bartee on tenor sax and Billy Wilson on drums, and the urgent driving energy of the festival performances are compelling. Hurt So Bad (a hit for Little Anthony and the Imperials) sees Claude Bartee’s tenor taking a welcome spell in the spotlight. (Bartee had previously played with Grant Green in New York and would go on to work for him for several years.) Grant Green seems to pick his way carefully and thoughtfully in a response to the sax which manages to both float and drive the tune forward.  This is an almost shockingly sumptuous package, with a full size 12-page colour booklet in addition to the elaborate heavy duty sleeve. And the vinyl is top quality: 180gram pressings, mastered by Bernie Grundman. Nevertheless, it’s the original tapes which count and the Paris radio studio recordings beat the Antibes sets hands down. The Paris sessions also benefit from brevity all of the Antibes tracks are extended workouts. On the other hand, the presence of Claude Bartee on tenor in Antibes adds a rousing additional dimension. Producer Zev Feldman’s liner notes mention that he seriously considered not including the Paris sessions in this package at all (because they’d already escaped into the wild in the form of a video and subsequent bootleg audio recordings). Thank the jazz gods he relented. 

Those performances on their own are reason enough for this triple vinyl Green-fest.  Funk in France is a seriously luxuriant offering for any Grant Green aficionado or any lover of jazz guitar and it looks set to fly out the door on Record Store Day. And if annual orgies of vinyl aren’t your thing, you can pick up the deluxe double CD version. http://www.londonjazznews.com/2018/04/lp-review-grant-green-funk-in-france.html

Personnel:  Released May 25, 2018:  Grant Green - guitar;  Larry Ridley – bass;  Don Lamond - drums;  Barney Kessel - guitar (Track 6) - July 18 & 20, 1970 at the Antibes Jazz Festival in Juan-les-Pins:  Grant Green - guitar;  Claude Bartee – tenor saxophone;  Clarence Palmer – organ;  Billy Wilson - drums.

Funk in France: From Paris to Antibes (1969-1970) Disc 1
Album: Funk in France: From Paris to Antibes (1969-1970)  Disc 2

Time: 61:39
Size: 141,4 MB

(14:37)  1. Hurt So Bad
(19:47)  2. Upshot
(27:13)  3. Hi-Heel Sneakers

Funk in France: From Paris to Antibes (1969-1970) Disc 2

Jay Lawrence - Thermal Strut

Styles: Jazz, Post Bop
Year: 2006
File: MP3@320K/s
Time: 57:03
Size: 130,8 MB
Art: Front

(6:25)  1. Thermal Strut
(3:39)  2. Topsy
(5:42)  3. Tell Me A Bedtime Story
(5:00)  4. Love For Sale
(6:27)  5. Almost Summer
(4:06)  6. Opus de Funk
(6:07)  7. You Can't Do That
(7:19)  8. Eulogy
(5:03)  9. Agua de Beber
(7:11) 10. Peacocks

Drummer Jay Lawrence has a long and serious resume which includes teaching, composing, arranging, and working with everyone from Sammy Davis and Cher to Phil Woods and James Moody. While he's been on more than ninety recordings, this is his first as a leader and it's a corker. This is partly because Lawrence couldn't have chosen better shipmates for his maiden voyage: Lynn Seaton, an always-in-demand bassist whose playing is unusually rich, imaginative, and moving; and (relative) newcomer Tamir Hendelman, whose reputation for superb arranging and piano playing has grown exponentially in the past decade. Thermal Strut is almost a musical history lesson. It offers exciting versions of "Topsy" and "Love for Sale," and honors a wide pantheon of disparate composers like Jimmy Rowles ("Peacocks"), Herbie Hancock ("Tell Me a Bedtime Story"), Tom Jobim ("Agua de Beber"), Horace Silver ("Opus de Funk") and Lennon/McCartney ("You Can't Do That," perhaps the first jazz cover of this tune). Rounding out the program are two engaging Lawrence compositions the rousing title track and the poignant, meditative "Eulogy" and one lyrical beauty by Hendelman ("Almost Summer"). This trio sets new standards for class and swing, and the solos are unusually consistent in their deep expressiveness. A few of the many notable moments on Thermal Strut: Seaton's signature scatting on the opener, Hendelman's funky arrangement of "Agua de Beber," Lawrence's churning approach to "Topsy," and his intricate, swinging brushwork, wherever it occurs. There's just one more thing to say about Lawrence's thoroughly enjoyable debut: it's about time!~ Dr Judith SCHLESINGER https://www.allaboutjazz.com/thermal-strut-jay-lawrence-origin-records-review-by-dr-judith-schlesinger.php

Personnel: Jay Lawrence: drums; Lynn Seaton: bass; Tamir Hendelman: piano.

Thermal Strut