“Blue Moon of Kentucky” by the Hillbilly Cat was Chicken 101. Oh, how we hope there were more…!
Thanks to our neighbor Tim for telling us about And Vinaly, a company that will press your ashes into vinyl. You could have yourself pressed into a record of anything you’d like – Now the only question is what you’d choose.
Rock and roll is full of tracks that take on newly spooky qualities when they’ve been pressed with your ashes, like the entire Black Sabbath catalog, or Cake’s “When You Sleep” or Yo La Tengo’s classic “Let’s Save Tony Orlando’s House”. What are people going to think?
If you want to make people sad every time they put you on the turntable, you’d chose Chris Bell’s “I Am the Cosmos” (Since its the only record he ever made, anyway) or some sappy classic like “In my Life” or – My choice – “You Won’t be Satisfied Until You Break my Heart”. Maybe you’d rather be irreverent, in which case I recommend Richard Pryor’s “Bicentennial Prayer” from Bicentennial Nigger. Maybe you’d prefer to be reverent and use a spiritual like “Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goal Posts of Life” or “In Heaven There’s No Beer”.
Hymie’s recommends the following:
TOP TEN RECORDS TO BE PRESSED INTO AFTER YOU DIE
(You don’t find this kind of thoughtful content on the websites for other record stores…)
10 – “Turn! Turn! Turn!” by Pete Seeger
Because you’re going to be a record now – Bwa hah hah! Seriously, Pete Seeger’s adaptation from the Book of Ecclesiastes is actually a pretty reverent choice.
This folk classic has been recorded by dozens of artists, too, so you have a lot of choices. Most people like the Byrd’s version, which was a huge hit, but every folk singer of the day recorded it as well. A short list would include Judy Collins, The Limelighters, The Seekers and Mary Hopkins (whose version would be long, long forgotten if it weren’t on Apple Records).
Seeger donates a portion of his royalties (He did write six words) to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, some of the zealots out there might not want to chose this one. Maybe they could chose a number from You Can’t Take it with You instead.
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There’s a lot of folk songs to chose from, anyway – If this had been the top eleven records to be pressed into after you die, which its not, number eleven might have been Phil Och’s “When I’m Gone”. We’re including it here for your listening pleasure, but its not an official part of this official Hymie’s TOP TEN list.
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You might also chose Ani DiFranco’s very nice recording of this song from her 2000 EP Swing Set. Then again, if you’re choosing one of Ani DiFranco’s songs you might consider “What if No One’s Watching?” (to be irreverent) or “Work Your Way Out” (to freak people out). All of my favorite Ani DiFranco sons aren’t as funny as these two but “Not Angry Anymore” might be a good way to be remembered.
(“Remember Alice? Its a song about Alice.”)
9 – Pretty much anything by the Grateful Dead
I’ll try to stay focused with this one – If you really want to spook them you can probably find something relevant like “China Cat Sunflower” if you were mauled by a tiger, or – Get this! – “Casey Jones” if you crashed a locomotive while on cocaine. There’s probably a song for every occasion and plenty of tracks to cover everything, like “Things Won’t Be the Same”:
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8 – “See that my Grave is Kept Clean” by Blind Lemon Jefferson
Nobody likes it when someone plays their records without cleaning them.
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7 – “Don’t Put no Headstone on my Grave” by Charlie Rich
This one would be for those who don’t want their record to be kept in a jacket. These are the same people who keep their 45s loose in an old cigar box, and would probably want their ashes scattered somewhere out of the way on a windy day anyway.
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Charlie Rich fans are discouraged from chosing “Who Will the Next Fool Be?” or (Seriously, what’s wrong with you) “There Won’t Be Anymore”.
6 – “Handle with Care” by the Traveling Wilburys
Of course, you could make the case that its a little late for instructions. However, if you’ve ever seen somebody drop an urn (And we’re not saying that we have, and certainly not saying that it happened right in front of the store) you know that it never hurts to be reminded. Seriously, folks, handle with care or you’re going to end up looking like Lucky Wilbury.
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5 – Pretty much anything from Blues Obituary by the Groundhogs.
Pretty much anything by the Groundhogs, really, although you probably would only want to use “Thank Christ for the Bomb” if you were blown up by a bomb. I’d actually go with “Waking Blues” from Scratching the Surface and put it in a jacket from Blues Obituary because nobody’s going to know anyway.
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4 – Pretty much anything by Hüsker Dü:
If you’re going to be ironic, you can’t go wrong with Minneapolis’ most beloved trio. Songs like “Diane” from Metal Circus have more creep factor in that context than anything I can think of by crypt-obsessive rockers like the Misfits, and other songs - like “Never Talking to you Again” (Zen Arcade) and “Too Far Down” (Candy Apple Grey) – are just plain mean spirited or miserable. If, like me, your favorite Hüsker Dü record is their epic concept album Zen Arcade, you’re going to settle on a track like “Whatever”.
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3 – “You Spin me Round (Like A Record)” by Dead or Alive
The problem is you’d really rather be remembered as the video, and that defeats the whole irony of being remembered as a record about being a record. Stupid Dead or Alive.
2 – “Cold Cold Ground” by Tom Waits
Because your crummy friend already called “Cemetery Polka”. He’s probably going to die first too, the jerk.
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1 – “Next Time Round” by Elvis Costello and the Attractions
Look, the truth is your mother’s going to be disappointed, and probably never play the record. You’re better off putting “Nearer My God to Thee” on the label because its going to sit in a china cabinet either way – And if nobody’s going to play the record, it might as well be something you like, like Arlo Guthrie’s “Motorcycle Song” or this one. Yes, in fact, all the other songs are taken and those are your only choices.
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Hymie’s Vintage Records took its old landlord to court and got about half of our security deposit out of his sweaty hands. We could have done better but we’re not going to kick ourselves over a little money.
So we can finally put the record store move behind us. We’re a little sad to have lost some money on the mural because we wanted to put it into a new mural here at Papa John’s building. There’s no doubt moving was the right choice – Just now while I am sitting at the front counter a customer asked how long we’d been here. “Since May first,” I said. “I like it better,” he told me. “The mold in that building would get to me.”
That’s true. I can’t imagine what a cesspool that building has become with this summer’s heavy rain. We were getting water in the shop, not the basement but the second floor shop, as early as February and it showed no sign of getting better when we left two months later.
As we settled into our bigger, cleaner new shop, Laura and I realized that the reason Gus hated the old building so much may have been all that mold – Maybe he suffered from the same headaches and runny, itchy nose and eyes that so many others have complained about. We’re glad he loves this new shop, and that he loves visiting the cafe and the ladies who run it, and of course Papa John and Sue upstairs.
We learned a lot of things going to conciliation court. One thing is that our old landlord has been reading this blog. He’s been looking at our Facebook page, too.
He must enjoy the posts about how much better business is just five blocks down the road, or about exchanges like the one I had with a customer just now. He tried so hard to get a record store to move into his rotting building and the reputation that preceded him made it impossible. As we shopped for a new location, real estate agents and property owners told us stories of his selfish, irrational behavior ruining business deals. I guess some of us can’t function in society, no matter how much we inherit.
So happy reading to you, fella. We’re going to be here for a long time, enjoying a new location where business is better and the bills are lower. Seems you were the worst thing that ever happened to this business, which is probably true of most things in your life.
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Laura and I discussed which albums should be included in our “Great Albums” series to accurately reflect the variety found here in the record shop, and came up with a few favorites that have been overlooked. Obviously, this collection is not intended to represent a canon of essential albums because we’d have to include and write about records everyone’s already familiar with and, frankly, bored with – The Hymie’s “Great Albums” are instead mostly favorites around here that come from all genres and eras, and are usually inspired by a copy that passes through the shop.
Today’s inclusion is in the shop right now but it won’t be for long – Its the only of Bruce Springsteen’s first ten albums that’s rarely in stock here. Pictured at left is the very same copy of Nebraska I purchased from Down in the Valley’s now-gone Richfield location twenty years ago. I’m probably overdue for a new copy, as this one sounds so poor that these recordings were made with a copy here at Hymie’s.
When I first heard this album I wasn’t particularly impressed, because I was far more interested in the lush high production sound The Boss created with Born to Run. Like all Springsteen records its grown on me because you just can’t doubt its sincerity – I also think it’s safe to assume Nebraska was not an album targeted at twelve year old rockers in the same way Born to Run was.
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In fact, at the time of its release Nebraska was a critical success for the Boss but a rare commercial disappointment, which is probably the reason there don’t seem to be enough copies to go around anymore. Years ahead of other artists who would record dark, back-to-roots albums when their careers waned (John Cougar-Mellancamp just released one this month), Springsteen’s Nebraska was not originally intended to be an album at all. Learn all about it in today’s…
TEN THINGS ABOUT NEBRASKA
10 – It’s a home recording in the truest sense: The album was recorded on a Tascam 4-track recorder in Springsteen’s Colts Neck, NJ home. Springsteen recorded just over a dozen original songs using only his voice, guitar, and occasional embellishments such as the mandolin heard on “Atlantic City”. These tracks were intended to be re-recorded with the E Street Band to produce a follow-up album to The River and are thematically similar. Various live arrangements and later recordings suggest the sound of this unissued album would have been similar to the synth-based rockers on Born in the USA, but we can only imagine because no tapes of the aborted sessions has surfaced – The Boss has long been one of the most bootlegged artists, owing to the quasi-revival nature of his live performances and to his extraordinary output (Springsteen threw away so many good tracks in producing his relatively few albums that they could be compiled on a lengthy 4-disc set in 1998).
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In fact, an interesting bootleg does exist of the original Nebraska tapes – Its the first volume in Labor of Love’s The Lost Masters, a 16-disc series of outtakes and home recordings, subtitled Alone in Colts Neck. Several mixes are slightly different on the original tape but its real appeal is the addition of those songs left off the Nebraska album which eventually became FM standards when Springsteen re-recorded them for his next album, Born in the USA.
[Seen at the right here is the track listing from the original 1982 album. The Labor of Love bootleg includes eleven of these twelve tracks and a variety of others that were not included. You can usually find this disc for about twenty dollars - I bought a copy at The Record Show at the Lyndale Avenue VFW years ago, but then sold it to pay for classes at the University (Not the best choice I ever made).]
9 – “Born in the USA” was written for Nebraska: Thematically, there’s a pretty strong relationship between the Boss’s three great 80s albums, although each are very unique. Together, The River, Nebraska and Born in the USA create a triptych that explores rural and suburban America during Reagan’s recession-driven first term. “Born in the USA” – Famously sought by Reagan as a campaign theme – is of course one of the most misunderstood pop hits of its time, but there’s no escaping the song’s angst and anguish in the original Nebraska recording.
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Other songs that began with the original Nebraska recordings: “Pink Cadillac”, “Downbound Train” and (Written at the time, but possibly not recorded) “Shut out the Light”. All four tracks (Two issued as b-sides) were recorded with the E Street Band for Born in the USA.
8 – One track was recorded in a studio. Nebraska includes one of Springsteen’s most haunting story-songs, “My Father’s House” which fits seamlessly into the album but was actually recorded in a studio long after the other tracks were laid down at home.
“My Father’s House” is one of the most interesting stories on the album. While its a continuation of Springsteen’s ongoing family stories, particularly about his relationship to his father, heard already in “Factory” on Darkness on the Edge of Town and “Independence Day” on The River, the song is feasibly more about having lost one’s faith in the Lord.
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Other Springsteen songs about his father include the various stories told in performance (look for his haunting cover of the Animal’s “Its My Life” from a Michigan State University show in 1976 or, more easily found, his introduction to “The River” on Live 1975-1985). Unique among them, “My Father’s House” seems to be explicitly Biblical, from the title to the “devil snapping at [his] heels”. Springsteen describes his Father’s house as a place he can’t return to, where “his sins lie unatoned”, a depressing image surpassed only by the beginning of the next, and last, track, “Reason to Believe”:
Seen a man standing over a dead dog lyin’ by the highway in a ditch
Lookin’ down kind of puzzled, pokin’ that dog with a stick
Got his car door swung open, he’s standing out on highway 31
Like if he stood there long enough, that dog’d get up and run
Struck me kind of funny, seem kinda funny sir to me
Still at the end of every hard day people find some reason to believe
As much as we can recall the goth gloom of 80s songs like “Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now”, this is about as depressing as it gets. American Music Club put a picture of a dead dog along a rural highway on the cover of their first album and I’ve always wondered if it was a reference to “Reason to Believe”, which has got to be the most depressing song I can think of.
“My Father’s House” isn’t gospel music – Elsewhere on Nebraska Springsteen is pretty critical of gospel music, although it would come to be an even larger part of his expanding influences by the time he recorded Human Touch and Lucky Town. The very fact that he isn’t welcome in “his Father’s house” anymore suggests there’s not going to be any redemption for the people in the stories on Nebraska.
7 – Nebraska was nearly issued as a cassette-only release: As if an introspective album of home recordings wasn’t commercial suicide enough (Remember, this was 1982) the album was nearly issued only on cassette. Why? Because it was so difficult to master due to the low recording level on Springsteen’s tape – Pressing the album on vinyl required substantial work with sophisticated noise-reduction technology, and the finished product is still very different from other albums in terms of its sound and its volume. The warmth and intimacy of this recording that we’ve come to appreciate today probably contributed to its poor sales (the worst of Springsteen’s career).
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6 – A video was shot for “Atlantic City”: You can see it by clicking here. I read once that the video’s director was given a small budget and told to shoot in Atlantic City, but otherwise had complete freedom – Its a great fit for the song and reminds one of the early MTV years when videos were interesting. “Atlantic City” was also issued as a single, which is the rarest in Springsteen’s catalog (The b-side is “Open All Night”).
5 – The album contains some of Springsteen’s most-covered material: “Atlantic City” has been widely recorded mostly by roots-rock artists like The Band, who included it on their album Jericho.
Here’s John Hiatt singing “Reason to Believe”:
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Like lipstick on a pig, you can’t hide what it really is – Happy as Hiatt makes it sound this is still a depressing song.
“Johnny 99″ was covered by Johnny Cash and even used as the title for an album. Emmylou Harris recorded a very nice version of “Mansion on the Hill” and various Springsteen tribute albums usually have more tracks from Nebraska than from other, more successful albums. An entire album of Nebraska covers was issued by Sub Pop in 2000 and features a variety of artists.
4 – Speaking of “Mansion on the Hill”…: Wikipedia tells us that “Mansion on the Hill” was inspired by a lyric from Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks which is stupid. If anything, Springsteen was referring to the same Hank Williams song that Morrison alluded to in “Cyprus Avenue”, or more likely both tapped into an enduring and familiar theme of American rhetoric (maybe not altogether removed from John Winthrop’s “City on a Hill” speech from 1630). Much of Nebraska is derivative or referential to various historical and cultural themes, but this is a bad example. Far more interesting are Springsteen’s deliberate allusions to historical figures (Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, John Brown, etc), as well as applying Depression-style folk narrative to contemporary economic and political issues in tracks like “Johnny 99″.
3 – “Nebraska” is about middle American mass murderer Charles Starkweather:
There have in fact been a variety of films and songs inspired by the 1959 killing spree of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, though from my own perspective very few of them carry much artistic merit. Springsteen was inspired by Terrence Malick’s film, Badlands, starring Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, as he often took inspiration from the movies. Malick’s film is a artful relic of the renaissance in American film during the 1970s, far superior to the variety of garbage films that mined its originality for ideas (Truly the worst offender being Oliver Stone’s masterpiece of self-indulgent garbage, Natural Born Killers).
Springsteen would visit the subject of a convicted killer again years later in the soundtrack to another film, Dead Man Walking. In many ways, the soundtrack to Dead Man Walking has proven to be a more enduring piece of artwork than the film itself – It collects original pieces by a variety of songwriters on the subject of murder and execution, including songs by Johnny Cash, Patti Smith and Tom Waits. Waits’ two contributions are gems (And one was turned into a genuine masterpiece by Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner and the Pine Valley Cosmonauts on an expansive recording called The Executioner’s Last Songs – So highly recommended!). Springsteen’s “Dead Man Walking”, like “Nebraska” before it, is a disappointment when one considers his skill as a storyteller. The best contribution to Dead Man Walking is in fact by relative newcomer Steve Earle, whose “Ellis Unit One” approaches the subject from the perspective of a prison guard.
2 – Nebraska was highlighted during Springsteens 1984-5 stadium concerts:
You already know this if you’re a Springsteen fan and you’ve collected any bootlegs, because any show from the Born in the USA tour features a 4-6 song suite of Nebraska and Nebraska-inspired numbers. Some of the recordings (Especially audience tapes) have a “pearls before swine” quality, because this probably became “bathroom break time” for a lot of Springsteen’s new fans – He actually produced some pretty interesting arrangements of these songs featuring the entire E Street Band. Live 1975-1985 puts together recordings of “Nebraska”, “Johnny 99″ and “Reason to Believe” in a pretty typical sequence with the rest of the recordings.
Here’s “Reason to Believe” from Live 1975-1985:
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Some of the additional songs which appeared in these mini-sets were issued as b-sides to the six Born in the USA singles (Like “Shut Out the Light” and “Bye Bye Johnny”).
So far as I can tell, it wasn’t until The Boss’ 1986 performance at a benefit for The Bridge School in Mountainview, California that he began to perform “Born in the USA” as it had been originally written. This show also featured the performance of “Seeds”, previously a concert-only rocker, heard below.
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1 – Springsteen had become fascinated with Woody Guthrie:
At the beginning of “This Land is Your Land” on Live 1975-1985 he recommends Joe Klein’s biography, Woody Guthrie: A Life and explains the history behind Guthrie’s most famous song. Springsteen’s songwriting was forever changed, and eventually he would perform a variety of other Woody Guthrie songs, including “Tom Joad Blues” but not issue them on albums (He did release a beautiful version of “I Ain’t Got No Home” on a Folkways tribute to Woody and Leadbelly). His 2006 album, We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, is a tribute to Guthrie’s contemporary Pete Seeger and definitely displayed his enduring interest in American roots music.
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Nebraska is an early, somewhat naive, expression of his enthusiasm. Tracks like “Nebraska” and “Johnny 99″ tap into the American murder ballad tradition – Hey, that would make a great post on this site! – and others reference gospel and revival music. One of the albums most enduring lines refers to gospel station and closes the song “Open All Night”:
Radio’s jammed up with gospel stations lost
souls callin’ lost salvation
Hey Mr. deejay won’t you hear my last prayer hey
ho rock and roll deliver me from nowhere.
Its pretty remarkable that just a couple years after the Buggle’s announced that “Video Killed the Radio Star” a genuine radio star issued an album of home recordings so clearly obsessed with radio. Maybe radio has always played a central role in Springsteen’s storytelling because the characters are always driving around (Even if they’re never actually getting anywhere). “State Trooper” complains about too many talk show stations, and also contains the line:
Radio relay towers, lead me to my baby
Springsteen himself would become a video star in just a couple years (And even launch the career of now-spooky Friends star Courtney Cox) but even Born in the USA seems more in tune with radio than music videos. Successful as it was, Springsteen’s follow up to Nebraska (Which produced no less than six hit singles) was not a particularly commercial record – Look no further than the cover. We can believe his jokes about his ass being prettier than his face, but it still pretty clear that The Boss is pissing on the flag.
If you have never looked at a list of the best selling records of the 1980s, you should. As a record collector, it will explain a lot of things (Like why there’s always a copy of Lexicon of Love in our dollar sales. If you are the same age as Laura and I you will probably remember buying and loving a lot of them (Like Brothers in Arms!) and if you’re a baby boomer you’ll probably have some exhausting tale about how Yes and ELP were better anyway.
Click on the link above and compare the top ten albums of 1982 with Nebraska. Ironically, Bruce’s sleeper hit has been a lot more influential – Even more than Barbra’s Love Songs. Where ever the modern “alt country” sound originated (I’m going with Uncle Tupelo, whose “Lillie Schull” is a murder ballad on par with anything Leadbelly sang, just to name one example) it owed a lot to artists who bucked the trend between Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Thriller. There wasn’t a lot of money in it for the 1930s revival music of Geoff and Maria Muldaur or Ry Cooder, but it kept a tradition going. Nebraska is unique in this group because Springsteen wasn’t a folk or blues singer, and his recordings were originally meant only as guides.
Nobody here knows who J.M. is (Its not our J.M. because I think we already got his Beatle records), but they’re right! It really is one of the best albums ever made!
I can’t say what’s more frustrating – That I didn’t post this picture six months ago when Laura took it, or that we sold this record. I never actually played it, so I can’t tell you if Yes is a good record, but I did carry it around as a prop for days.
Dave? Do you have a copy of Innervisions?
Hmmm…Let me think…YES we do!
Dave? Would you like some help moving the record store?
Hmmm…Let me think…YES I would!
And now its gone – The most wonderfully useful record jacket of all time. The worst part of it all is that I remember the guy who bought it, and he only buys records to resell them on eBay (It must have some larger value beyond its novelty). Our beloved Yes record is probably now sealed in lucite and sitting on a mahogany shelf somewhere in England. What a waste.
Craig visits Times Square in his Hymie’s T-shirt.
This morning I took Gus and Nova up to Al’s Breakfast to cheer them up, and then to the grocery store for a few things. Outside of the grocery store I dropped the bank bag for Hymie’s and didn’t notice – Fortunately the person who found it wasn’t one of the rest of us. He was a good man named Anthony Shane who is a florist just across the highway on Cedar Avenue. If you click on here it will take you to the website for his shop, Anthony Shane Florist, and it goes without saying that we hope some of you will support his business. Thank you, Mr. Shane, should you happen to see this after a wave of guys smelling like musty vinyl overwhelm your shop.
LAST OF THE GREAT BIG BANDS?
The way we understand the development of any art form seems to be driven by our need to break it into specifically defined epochs divide by landmark changes, as though we were geologists. Thus is the history of jazz dominated by the big band era and its ultimate demise with the advent of bebop. PBS was able to conveniently work all these transitions out in tidy ninety minute segments per era of jazz history (So long as they took place before 1965).
The problem with this is that the history of most art forms does not transition so dramatically – There’s more of a bleeding overlap between eras. The big band era didn’t originate with a big bang and it certainly didn’t disappear with a big bust when the bebop movement began. In fact, well many of the best bands lived well into the 60s and some composers – Especially Ellington – were decades from recording their best work.
So here we are today considering the end of the big band era and some of the great big band albums which came years after its peak – Today’s choice is The Quintessence by Quincy Jones and his Orchestra, which was released on the Impulse! label in 1961. I mentioned this album a couple of weeks ago when we were listening to Straight No Chaser because Quincy Jones’ big band arrangement of the title track, which is included in this post.
Although Impulse! is often associated with “New Thing” jazz by artists like John Coltrane and Archie Shepp, it also issued a variety of traditional jazz and big band albums worth hearing. In fact, my favorite album on the label is Count Basie and the Kansas City Seven which has some great solos from big band veterans Thad Jones and Freddie Green as well as some very swinging arrangements by Frank Wess. There are also some popular big band albums on Impulse! by Coleman Hawkins and Kai Winding and J.J. Johnson.
(Impulse! albums are always easy to spot on the shelves because of their distinctive orange spines.)
“Quintessence”, the opening number, is a Quincy Jones original that turns up here and there, but none has matched the grace of this original recording – Like “Solitude” from Duke Ellington’s classic Ellington Indigos its a much more mellow lead track than most big band albums, setting the stage for a much more expansive collection. The sparkling alto solo is performed by the perennially underrated Phil Woods.
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While “Quintessence” captures the seldom-recorded introspective side of Quincy Jones, “Robot Portrait” is a reminder that he can swing. A great showcase for solos by Oliver Nelson and Freddie Hubbard, the orchestra on this track also includes Woods, Frank Wess and Thad Jones – Imagine having so many great arrangers working on the same number!
Although it swings, “Robot Portrait” has a sophistication that probably sounded very modern in 1961, as do all of the arrangements on The Quintessence. Its a big band record but everything, including the compositions (Most originals, this one by Billy Byers), were modern – There are no big band standards on the record and no veterans of the great bands. Several artists here went on to lead their own modern big bands, including Thad Jones (with Mel Lewis) and Oliver Nelson.
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The reason I mentioned this record in a previous post was Quincy Jones’ arrangment of the Thelonious Monk standard “Straight, No Chaser” heard here. I have never been a fan of the Monk big band recordings but I like this arrangement because its short and simple. The soloists are Curtis Fuller and Joe Newman (Again, so much talent on one record!).
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The Quintessence includes several more originals by Jones and a second Billy Byers piece. Jones puts together a foot stompin’ classic called “Hard Sock Dance” that’s highlighted by a joyful solo shared by Thad Jones and Freddie Hubbard. Some very subtle work by pianist Patricia Brown and bassist Milt Hinton hold it all together. This listener’s only complaint about this album? “Little Karen” simply fades out. I find it hard to believe an arranger of Quincy Jones’ talent couldn’t have worked out a resolution.
“Little Karen” is by Benny Golson, and has a great tenor solo by Eric Dixon and Frank Wess, both Basie big band members. Quincy Jones has recorded a lot of Benny Golson’s great numbers over the years, including the fantastic “Killer Joe” (On Walking in Space). Golson, who is still alive, is also the composer of “I Remember Clifford” and several other songs which have become standards – Maybe a future post should visit some of the Benny Golson/Art Farmer Jazztet albums!
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A HYMIE’S TOP FIVE LIST OF GREAT 60s BIG BAND RECORDINGS
5 - The Quintessence by Quincy Jones and his Orchestra
(Samples of which you can hear in this post!)
4 - Liberation Music Orchestra by Charlie Haden
(I think the arrangements on this album were by pianist Carla Bley)
3 - Atlantis by Sun Ra and his Arkestra
(Although most of Sun Ra’s 60s records could be included in this list, the side-long piece “Atlantis” is a highlight)
2 – The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady by Charles Mingus
(Not a “big band” recording in the traditional sense, or even in the same way Mingus’ classic Columbia albums are – Both of those recordings are from 1959 and not eligible for inclusion on this list. Mingus’ 1960 album for Mercury, Pre-Bird, is a more traditional celebration of big band music)
1 – …And His Mother Called Him Bill by Duke Ellington and his Orchestra
(The Duke’s tribute to Billy Strayhorn, who had only recently passed away, is his most personal recording and usually considered one of his best albums. Several Strayhorn compositions are presented in their definitive arrangement, including “The Intimacy of the Blues”. Johnny Hodges solo on “Blood Count” is one of his best performances – And that’s saying a lot! LP and CD reissues also include an expanded take of “Lotus Blossom” that features baritone Harry Carney playing a beautiful solo over Duke’s mournful piano. Truly an essential jazz album.)
Back to the Quincy Jones album: “For Lena and Lenny” is the last track we’ve included here. It refers to Lena Horne and Lennie Hayton, who wrote the liner notes to The Quintessence. The piece ambles along on a steady Basie-esque beat but sounds modern, with bold brass accents and some great solos by Patricia Brown. A muted solo by Clark Terry is at the center of this piece, adding to its classic sophistication.
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Just a reminder that this coming weekend during the LOLA Art Crawl we will have our monthly SIDEWALK SALE! Crates and crates of LPs for only fifty cents and this month we’re bringing back the 45s – Boxes and boxes of them and they’re all only a quarter!
The sidewalk sale stuff will be available all weekend, and we’ve got a lot to put out there because it was a busy, busy month! Hope to see you this weekend, and don’t miss some of the amazing things to be found along the LOLA Art Crawl!
