"Ronnie McKinley" wrote
Anyways .....
http://www.apah69.dsl.pipex.com/keith_g/show/show.htm
Interesting Keith. In a novel sort of way. My jazz isn't as purist
as this stuff :) ... more your Diana Krall - Oscar Peterson - Ben
Webster - Sonny Rollins - John Coltrane (but not necessarily
by Coltrane himself) sort of thing.
OK, it's the 'smooth end' of the spectrum somewhat, but I also (dare I say
it?) 'dig' it too.....
But maybe one, or two, modern CD copies for the music collection
wouldn't go amiss.
What more can I say? ;)
Unfortunately, I think the Sheik and Sadie album is possibly the weakest in
the 8 or 9 '504' albums that I've got.
Apart from the fairly obvious 'Anno Domini Effects' on the performers, I
think it also it suffers from being 'played for the mic' - remembering that
although the music almost goes right back to the 20s, the album was actually
cut on 1st August, 1985. - I'd take a bet they still went down very well in
the pubs and clubs they were playing in at that time.
One point I would like to make that I'd also take a bet that not one of
those names on that long list got rich from playing Jazz. If you read/could
read the sleeve notes you would see that these people did stuff like bagging
coffee beans, repairing tellies and plastering to put a crust on the table.
They played Jazz because they wanted to/couldn't help themselves! (I wish I
had lived less than a bus-ride from that stuff in those days!)
I do like 20s jazz (and so do many sur le Continong - Belleville Rendevous?)
and much prefer it to some of the 'lift music' that is getting called 'Jazz'
today. I also prefer the older stuff to be recorded at live performances for
the ambience and 'feel'. Lionel Hampton's brilliant ****ing about wouldn't
be quite the same (or perhaps wouldn't have happenned?) without the audience
appreciation and the venues themselves are almost as interesting as the
music.
(It is also interesting that the modern stuff seems to sound much better
without 'ambience'....???)