Gene Estes & Dick Grove - West Coast Series/ Jazz & Swing Orchestras, Westful Big, Bad & Beautiful

Styles: Jazz
Year: 2020
Time: 77:09
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Size: 178,3 MB
Art: Front

( 3:57) 1. Sharly My Boy
( 3:36) 2. All About Henry
( 4:09) 3. Poca Nada
( 3:27) 4. Big “P”
( 3:03) 5. Pot Luck
( 3:03) 6. D.A.V.
( 4:10) 7. Sweet Lump
( 5:02) 8. Bésame Mucho
( 4:34) 9. Goodbye
( 4:17) 10. The Call
( 4:13) 11. Dead Ringer
( 5:22) 12. Dill Pickles
( 3:27) 13. My Lady
( 3:42) 14. Good 'n Plenty
( 4:15) 15. Big, Bad & Beautiful
( 6:26) 16. Ain't No Doubt About It
(10:20) 17. Trilogy for a Boy

When the dust from the collapse of the Swing Era settled, there were few big bands left that had survived. Yet, because they loved the swinging drive of a full-on jazz orchestra, a series of adventurous and unsung bandleaders optimistically organized some fine, but short-lived, new orchestras that were packed with jazz and studio musicians, holding the flag of Swing high.

Gene Estes (1931-1996) had a richly varied and successful musical career as a drummer, vibraphonist, composer and arranger, writing for, and performing equally well with small groups and big bands. His career went through several stages, not the least of which was his attempt to keep a big band going in Hollywood during the ‘60s. He organized it in the fall of 1964 to play his own compositions and arrangements. The first iteration lasted only one year, but in 1966 he reorganized it and was able to keep it active until the end of 1968. “Over the years we’ve had many different good players and always a good band,” Estes mentioned, but then he also recognized that this particular version of the band was his favorite. This is the only recording that exists of this magnificent big band.

Dick Grove (1927-1998) was a rare and unique composer-arranger-conductor, and just as Clare Fischer, Gil Evans and other arrangers of renown, he had to wait until he was in his thirties before he could make any impact on the jazz scene. This album proves he was an inventive, polished arranger, who scored a wide sampling of contemporary musical styles beyond the then accepted boundaries of jazz. All are Grove originals, in a program that jumps from straight-ahead driving tunes, to bossa nova grooves, blues and jazz rock pieces. The interesting performances are spiced by the brilliant solo work of saxophonists Lanny Morgan, Bill Perkins, Bob Hardaway and Bill Hood; trumpeters Joe Burnett and Jay Daversa; pianist and organist Pete Jolly; trombonist George Bohanon; and the brilliant drummer Roy Burns (1935-2018), who adds to the music his masterful technique and rhythmical drive.

Sources: Tracks #1-9, from the album “Westful” (Nocturne Hollywood NRS-701)
Tracks #10-17, from the album “Big, Bad & Beautiful” (First Priority Music FPM 1001)

Personnel on "Westful":
Conte Candoli, Ollie Mitchell, Ralph Osborn, trumpets; Herbie Harper, trombone; Bob Enevoldsen, valve trombone; Dick Leith, bass trombone; Med Flory, alto sax; Tom Scott, alto sax & clarinet; Bob Hardaway, tenor sax & clarinet; Jay Migliori, tenor sax; Bill Hood (#1,3,4,5) or Meyer Hirsh (#2,6,7,8 & 9) baritone sax & clarinet; Joyce Collins, piano; Alan Estes, vibes (#3,4,8); Jim Hughart, bass; Gene Estes, drums, arranger & conductor.
Recorded in two sessions at the MGM Sound Stages, Culver City, Cal. March 23, 1968

Personnel on "Big, Bad & Beautiful":
Buddy Childers, Jack Feierman, Hal Espinosa, trumpets; Joe Burnett, Jay Daversa, trumpet & flugelhorn; Charles Loper, George Bohanon, Bob Edmondson, Dick McQuarry, trombones; Lanny Morgan, Bill Perkins, alto saxes; Bob Hardaway, soprano & tenor sax; Bill Robinson, clarinet & tenor sax; Bill Hood, baritone sax; Pete Jolly, piano, Fender Rhodes & organ; Norm Jeffries, vibes; Al Viola, guitar; Gene Cherico, double bass & Fender bass; Roy Burns, drums; Dick Grove, composer, arranger & conductor.

Recorded at TTG Studios, Hollywood, Cal., summer of 1973

West Coast Series - Jazz & Swing Orchestras, Westful/Big, Bad & Beautiful

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Mark Turner - Reflections on: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

Styles: Jazz
Year: 2025
Time: 73:41
File: MP3 @ 128K/s
Size: 68,8 MB
Art: Front

( 4:04) 1. Movement 1. Anonymous
( 9:37) 2. Movement 2. Juxtaposition
( 5:31) 3. Movement 3. Pulmonary Edema
(12:03) 4. Movement 4. New York
( 9:46) 5. Movement 5. Europe
( 8:26) 6. Movement 6. The Texan...The Soldier
( 6:59) 7. Movement 7. Mother...Sister...Lover
( 8:37) 8. Movement 8. Pragmatism
( 6:11) 9. Movement 9. Identity Politics
( 2:22) 10. Movement 10. Closure

“I once heard a colored man sum it up in these words: ‘It’s no disgrace to be black, but it’s often very inconvenient’”. The quote, wry, lightly expressed yet heavily charged, is typical of the text that inspires saxophonist Mark Turner’s ambitious new suite here, as of his own playing and composition.

It comes from the novel in the title, a meditation on race in the USA 100 years ago from the point of view of a black man able to pass as white. A penetrating work by the remarkable author and civil rights activist (also diplomat, lawyer, and university professor) James Weldon Johnson, it grabbed Turner’s attention because members of his own family including his mother were able to pass, so the issues of presentation, perception, identity, status, and self-determination it poses were intensely familiar.

Twenty years later, the ten movement suite he presents here uses words from the book on around half the tracks. The leader’s brief passages of measured narration – in keeping with the prose style set the scene for long musical responses. Bringing words and music together not as songs but as separate strands of the work is always risky. The music or the words may not quite work, or they may not work together. Here, the combination succeeds brilliantly. ‘I wanted to have music that was enhanced with words, not words that were enhanced by music’, Turner tells us in the notes. That is just what he has achieved.

And such music it is. The state of the art quintet assembled here includes Turner’s closest recent associate Jason Palmer on trumpet, David Virelles on piano and – here and there – synthesisers, Matt Brewer on bass and Nasheet Waits on drums. The compositions generally begin simply, gathering complexity as they go. Piano, bass and drums furnish an atmospheric backdrop much of the time, with occasional more prominent contributions. Saxophone and trumpet do most of the heavy lifting, and provide one of the most striking twin horn leads on a connected suite of compositions I can recall since Bobby Bradford joined David Murray on the former’s deeply affecting Death of a Sideman.

Like Bradford, Turner displays a cherishable ability to unroll long lines each of which sounds like someone following a fresh train of thought. Some in the past (not me) have suggested that his playing can be stronger on intellect than emotion. If that ever happened, it is certainly not the case here. Every piece fizzes with feeling that the understated narrative preludes mostly prime but do not let loose until the music allows it to emerge.

That culminates in part 9, Identity Politics. For once, the music sets the mood first, Turner and Palmer playing as one in a through-written duet, at once slightly fretful and ruefully resigned, for four minutes. Then Turner voices the protagonist’s closing regret at turning away from his heritage, and the struggle that comes with it, to live in relative security, while Virelles underpins the words with the chords of Lift Every Voice and Sing, for which Johnson also wrote the words to go with his brother’s music.

It’s an indelible moment from a work that lodged firmly in the mind from first hearing.

I thought Turner’s previous release, Live at the Village Vanguard, from 2023 was perfectly achieved music. Reflections, though, feels like a new high water mark for an artist at the peak of his powers.

Mark Turner appears with Jason Palmer’s quartet at Ronnie Scott’s on Weds 15 Nov and Birmingham Conservatory’s East Side Jazz Club on 16 Nov.https://ukjazznews.com/mark-turner-reflections-on-the-autobiography-of-an-ex-colored-man/

Personnel: Mark Turner - Tenor Sax & Narration; Jason Palmer - Trumpet; David Virelles - Piano, Profit & Organ; Matt Brewer - Acoustic & Electric Bass; Nasheet Waits - Drums

Reflections on: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

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